tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12080845502570165822024-02-29T23:39:10.391-06:00Root and RockA Woodsy Pagan, Traditional Craft and Hedgewitch Blog.Scyllahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03822031765851992717noreply@blogger.comBlogger132125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1208084550257016582.post-21486261365453412082022-07-03T16:48:00.001-05:002022-07-03T16:48:11.337-05:00The Strange pt. 1<p><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div></div><p></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-dASJRiEypMCAzo-rTlNXv5zmA0lJiUdVfy35NmfLibC8xAR-lLc8li1s3_wddjn-Y_sFERRootTjUJCiAkuDoi6hgqTaBeCjRwwA3fSPPSxsjQHUG-VgQOxkWhEkgRAcHTXpxCJUY5kHH6iWItkQxwOKZwhmYyt2p7aefqCrrVCuosRnI4iUVg7b/s640/ruin-ge06628536_640.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="426" data-original-width="640" height="278" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-dASJRiEypMCAzo-rTlNXv5zmA0lJiUdVfy35NmfLibC8xAR-lLc8li1s3_wddjn-Y_sFERRootTjUJCiAkuDoi6hgqTaBeCjRwwA3fSPPSxsjQHUG-VgQOxkWhEkgRAcHTXpxCJUY5kHH6iWItkQxwOKZwhmYyt2p7aefqCrrVCuosRnI4iUVg7b/w418-h278/ruin-ge06628536_640.jpg" width="418" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">I am an advocate of re-enchantment, and “weirding” of one’s life and practices. The honest truth is, and I tell you this as someone 25+ years into Whatever This Is, that you can assemble a fully functional practice out of thin air because of how weird, truly weird, “Whatever This Is” actually is. </span></p><span id="docs-internal-guid-1f8faa82-7fff-b233-21db-d20bda10888a"><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Consensus reality is not so different from the tectonic plates of the physical world. Consensus Reality is sort of just a slower, firmer, raft slowly moving around on a flow of High Strange and Cosmic Horror. But that doesn’t mean that sometimes the raft doesn’t wiggle, or break, when we least expect it. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Sometimes, actually fairly frequently, I’ll dream of the thinnest upper parts of the earth - usually asphalt parking lots or parched clay - cracking apart and the ink-black gush of whatever is Beneath bubbling up, eating away, consuming and replacing. All the little bits sinking down down down into… into … </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">well…</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">☙ ⋅˙⋅ ❧</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A few years back I was walking to my shop with a greenware (raw, unfired, clay) bowl, and dropped it. I watched the bowl make contact with the concrete sidewalk, violently jiggle,</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> and drop through it. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">My brain did what I can only describe as “a bit of a wobble.” I took inventory of the situation - my empty hands still dusted with greenware powder, the absence of the bowl or any shards thereof, or any indication that it had struck the sidewalk. The obvious solution was that I never had the bowl in my hands, right? <i>R</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>ight?</i></span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It was nowhere to be found. Not in the shop, not in any building or outbuilding, not on any horizontal surface between the house and the shop, not in my car (just in case), not in the trash (why not check there), not in any of the kitchen cabinets (might as well look), not in the refrigerator or freezer (please be somewhere), not in the dozens of bits it should’ve shattered into. Not in the grass. Not in my hands. Not where it had been before I opted to carry it to the kiln. My brain, however, had already supplied the happy answer:</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> “Since it’s a physics object that did not behave as I expected it to, the collision box glitched out. Like any physics object it went wiggly before dropping through the world model.”</span></p><i><br /></i><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>Now you just hang on a second there, brain. </i>It’s a REAL OBJECT, not a piece of video game art. There’s no physics model at play here. That was solid physical matter meeting harder, stronger, solid physical matter. What happened to the bowl? “</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It’s fine.” </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Said brain.</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> “The collision just glitched out. Don’t worry about it!”</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I know that the human brain will composite and whole-cloth manufacture things to fill in the voids in its perceptions. It will morph a column of shadow into a man in a hat (and it is always a man, and he is always wearing a hat), it will matrix the absolute blackness of a cave into the image of ducks waddling by as if illuminated by a flashlight - complete with the sound of wet feet and rasping quacks, it will turn a half-seen pile of clothes or an amalgam of leaves in the dark into some of the most baleful monsters conceivable by our fleshy little forms. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But in this case it put in something else where there was ample visual stimuli. This was not a Prisoner's cinema or a Ganzfeld effect. This was something else.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">☙ ⋅˙⋅ ❧</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Strange is always an inch away, and yet choosing when, how, and to what degree we move that single inch is a life’s work. You can’t seem to get there when you try, but when you’re there trying to get back feels insurmountable. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The “Veil” (for me) is a simulacra of stability on an ocean of that Strangeness. It’s the consensus crust I’m walking on that occasionally gives way, and I find myself knee-deep in a gopher hole of “What the fuck just happened?” </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This is the Cosmic Horror - Should I be grateful that I saw a video game glitch instead of <i>what actually occurred</i>?</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">How much of what we experience in Dreams-That-Are-Not-Dreams is a handy visual used to mask the real sights and vistas? Is the column of shadow that is matrixed into a man in a hat (always a man, always a hat) actually a man-shaped shadow or did the brain provide that as a convenient cover for something else? How much MORE sinister is it if there was never a shadow there at all, yet something there which our brain covers with a shadow instead?</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">☙ ⋅˙⋅ ❧</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I am often working my magic in a place where the thin, crispy, crust of the world has been carefully excised, and has only the most tenuous grip on consensus. In a place where the cracks in concrete are a chasm to the Abyss. Where places are bigger (yet… not, yet… are) than they are in the physical world. Where there is, for reasons probably best left unknown, a fully functioning rest stop bathroom in the spirit-world incarnation of my back yard. A place where I can “walk” a certain direction and hit a graveyard that extends for endless miles, that may or may not be All Graveyards. It is in this between, strange, unmoored, place where things can work - because the laws we know of don't apply. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Once, when I was walking home from the local grocery store at night I got incredibly lost. Now, that may sound somewhat reasonable except that the path to the grocery store was two turns and about a mile of total distance. After realizing I was incredibly lost I took note of exactly what path I’d gone (leave the store, walk to the street, turn left)... except in order to be where I was I would’ve had to have turned right. Except… the houses were on the wrong side of the road. In fact everything was the wrong way around. Distances were all wrong. It was clearly my neighborhood but it had been mirror-flopped, and distorted. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It was that Dreaming place, that Circle place. Neither-here-nor-there, caught between. I had slipped loose of the Normal Road and was walking somewhere Fey. Awake, sober, aware. I shut my eyes tight, took off my jacket, and turned it inside-out. When I opened my eyes the world was back to normal. But the world will never, ever, be Normal-Normal again. Not with the knowledge that I am one liminal moment from sticking my foot through the thin layer of Igneous crust, sober, and outside the bounds of the carefully excised, holding a six pack of Kiwi-Strawberry Shasta in my hand. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">☙ ⋅˙⋅ ❧</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What is very important is to understand that the raft is temporary. One day it will dive downward, toward the liquid mantle of the world and melt. Even if it feels like solid rock right now it was once Strange and to Strange it will return. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The natural state of the world is that dreamlike non-sense, with overgrown pineal glands saving us from the shadows that </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">really do</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> have teeth. It was only our unique ability to pretend that we could exit the natural cycle that meant we could stand on our raft, huddled around a captured flame, and keep the Strangeness beyond, and beneath.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But like the Chimp that needs enrichment and a natural habitat or it falls over from heart disease - we need that wildness. We need the scare, and the shadows and the Strange. We strive toward it in all things. <i>Why is it so terrifying when we find it? </i></span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Devil’s advocate: Let’s say I had a little seizure or was sleep-walking the day the bowl dropped from my hands. Let’s say that stress made me WILDLY hallucinate. Okay. Cool. Let’s say that dreams are only dreams, and nothing more. Let’s say that none of this is anything. I’d be quite comforted by that at times, lemme tell ya.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>Where the fuck is the bowl? Why have I still never found a trace of it four years later? </i></span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">How is it that my own father dreams of the same stretched and squashed versions of the places near my childhood home, where the plants wave and dance in the moonlight?</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I don’t want an answer. I don’t need an answer. I can’t use an answer. These things happen. The importance is in what is done with them, not in the proving or disproving of them. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And next time this topic comes around - if the brain holds out against the executive dysfunction - I'll try to get into what can be done with these phenomena to strengthen, bolster, and even whole-cloth build a practice.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">☙ ⋅˙⋅ ❧</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><i><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And before you go: I'm working on an as-yet unnamed Lenormand deck. If you hop over to</span><a href="https://ko-fi.com/rootandrock" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> https://ko-fi.com/rootandrock</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> you'll be able to drop a few bucks in the tip jar to follow along with the creation process. I’ve completed the watercolor art for two cards, and have begun work on the backs, packaging and other ephemera. </span></i></span>Scyllahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03822031765851992717noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1208084550257016582.post-12798546950012253422022-05-19T08:45:00.003-05:002022-05-19T08:45:37.175-05:00Yes, That Plant is a Witch.<p><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhpBQaIoPTQzp94KwV7tHdBfXotByF3fA--AeQrwmzeuDhRIn8CsT9biM17mcO-fCZLQkofgF0YLlus0Sc9YsfIeke0sY0BOg8_2YLkfNh_twyrM-rSIj4gLc67efneySpGa-9ZDJWRwiyaqzb2FzeU2iYQ-RVXEq3PaCIjKt-YlQVJKeYRYY_UeXx2" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="442" data-original-width="1920" height="146" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhpBQaIoPTQzp94KwV7tHdBfXotByF3fA--AeQrwmzeuDhRIn8CsT9biM17mcO-fCZLQkofgF0YLlus0Sc9YsfIeke0sY0BOg8_2YLkfNh_twyrM-rSIj4gLc67efneySpGa-9ZDJWRwiyaqzb2FzeU2iYQ-RVXEq3PaCIjKt-YlQVJKeYRYY_UeXx2=w632-h146" width="632" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">While formulating a new oil, one of the potential ingredients stood out to me very prominently. In fact, I’ve grown that plant before in a koi pond. It’s impossible to get dried or preserved in any way, and increasingly harder to find potted. No, you’ve got to get it in small tissue culture cups specifically for planted aquaria. </span></p><span id="docs-internal-guid-6d3989fc-7fff-f0c4-bea0-37f020dbaf69"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In short: The only way I will get the quantity needed for the oil is to order a fussy and temperamental ornamental aquatic plant, and grow it for god knows how long - assuming I even can. <b><i>And that’s sort of how it ought to be.</i></b></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: 14.6667px;">. • .</span></span></p><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It’s incredibly easy to just buy a big, bulk, vacuum-packed bag of Wormwood or Mugwort from an online retailer and stuff something full of it without really ever engaging with the </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">plant</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. Given that I’ve now been blogging for over ten years I’m not sure if I ever posted about my “Process”, but if this is a duplicate post, blame my neuroatypical brain, because I certainly will (the traitorous bastard). </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">When I brush against a “new” plant or material I first try to learn about it in a broad-strokes generic way. Where is it from, what is its conservation status, how ethical is it to obtain, toxicity, etc. Then I dig deeper into “associations”, historical use or lore, whether or not it’s something that’s culturally specific, how common it is in cultivation, where it can be purchased reasonably/ethically, and a bit about its life cycle. If I ever acquire any, the first thing I do is a ritual act of introduction. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This is something I have actually gone into deeper in the long-suffering “familiar book”</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">, but a general gloss would be this:</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I, and my plant familiar intermediary, reach out to a presiding spirit of that plant. We make formal introductions of who I am, what I do, what I am offering and what I am seeking. The presiding spirit usually communicates via my plant familiar at first - I get a filtered version of “do not do these things, but please make sure that other things are done.” or maybe “call me by this name, or in this way” or maybe “Leave me alone.” - in which case I dispose of the material I have as safely as I can. I don’t think most people do any of that, or anything even remotely close to that, and that kinda… sits weirdly with me?</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Disclaimer: Obviously each person’s Craft is going to be different, and that’s a good thing. In no way am I saying one way is “wrong” (I mean there are some wrong ways but if you emerge unscathed, congrats on your epic caper). But I wonder to myself whether simply using herbs like components might actually be a contributing factor in cutting off access to the “deepening” of that Craft that so many people seem to be looking for. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">For me… it’s sort of like: What is the point of all of this if it’s not forming <i><b>meaningful connections</b></i> to the unseen? Isn’t it highly practical to form a meaningful exchange with a powerful spirit who is ready, willing, able, and enthusiastic about contributing to the Work? </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Consider that the herb in a jar on a shelf, that bead on your strand, that shew-stone on your conjuration table all came from thinking, feeling, ensouled, creatures (“O thou creature of salt…”). Creatures whose “bodies” produce power for magic by way of their mere existence (much as you do). Consider how it might aid things if you had not only their dismembered bodies, not only their </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">perforce presence</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, but their ongoing and enthusiastic </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">participation</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. Not just a herb in a jar, but rather a witch who happens to be a herb in a jar, joining in the </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>unseen coven</b></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In a lot of ways that’s what people ought to mean when they describe plants as “allies”, but they often don’t. Where I find it I usually find it as a short-hand for “mind-altering” and very little about “partnership”. Rarely do I see acknowledgement of a specific plant having a specific spirit, or any reference to that relationship and how it may differ from others. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I don't want to be part of Woo that places humanity on top of the mountain, lording over. I don't want to be the guy on the mountaintop. I want to be part of a community of beings - embodied, disembodied, never-bodied… etc. Working together. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I work in this sphere - the meaty, bright, earthy, world of whatever we inhabit - and have been given the gift to see and feel and know and love my neighbors in other spheres that overlap this one (does my logo make sense now?). I have been given the gift of hands and flesh with which to DO things; The physical acts my nonphysical compatriots cannot accomplish without great personal cost. Through mutually beneficial and mutually cooperative work we can both achieve our goals.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I will not "rise above" this meat and earth. I will bring my internal godhead down into myself and work wonders from the earth, in the earth, for the earth. I will return to it what it has given me. If not... Get me off this ride, this ride’s going somewhere I don’t wanna be. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;">. • .</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Long ago I had my attention yanked in the direction of Dandelions due to the rising popularity of them being used as an ad-hoc “mannekin”/mandragore. I did a full blog post about it after I’d settled in with the plant, and I find them (on the whole) to be one of the unsung heroes of the Viridarium/Green/Mythotypal Grove.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Working with not only Dandelion as a material, or as a concept, but as a specific presiding spirit has intensified and deepened my relationship with the plant and plant spirit/s greatly. In our relationship I now know another witch who is keenly attuned to specific tasks that I find otherwise difficult. In return all I need to do is kick dandelion seed heads a reasonable amount, and not mow them until they’ve gone to seed. The spirit and I have worked out how best to “interface” to accomplish the work, and the work goes very well indeed.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Dandelion is a psychopomp in reverse. It’s a well that burrows deep and brings up what is hidden. It is indispensable, and even though it’s hated and forsaken… there it is. You’re never going to get rid of it so you might as well get to know it.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Since I began to really pay attention, keep up and work with plants (animals, rocks, locations, etc.) in this way I have found that everything flowed more easily. And imagine my utter shock when one of them (and then more) showed up to circles or dream-sabbats in their finery. So, yes of course ... I'll get the little tissue cultured cup. I will grow the fussy plant. It <i>deserves </i>it. And I will welcome it, if and when it decides to join in. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. • .</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>And before you go: I've begun working on an as-yet unnamed Lenormand deck. If you hop over to <a href="https://ko-fi.com/rootandrock">https://ko-fi.com/rootandrock</a> you'll be able to drop a few bucks in the tip jar to follow along with the creation process.</i></span></p><div><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div></span>Scyllahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03822031765851992717noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1208084550257016582.post-58558033473670375772021-04-22T18:12:00.001-05:002021-04-23T15:49:49.457-05:00Well, then... <br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0hyphenhyphenXrKoZPHxDz9I2nbEIEiartqnVQ_kgDQrrKgFdtDmL9DhIHmy4FJkstVi3ukw3_mVuRoBqwyD4I8ZQ3aNGgB3pHBDckJOsgyArWvpQspWHcVwlwO1vy9yTLF_K9eja_6KYHDXKP5zc/s750/blog.png"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0hyphenhyphenXrKoZPHxDz9I2nbEIEiartqnVQ_kgDQrrKgFdtDmL9DhIHmy4FJkstVi3ukw3_mVuRoBqwyD4I8ZQ3aNGgB3pHBDckJOsgyArWvpQspWHcVwlwO1vy9yTLF_K9eja_6KYHDXKP5zc/w412-h295/blog.png" /></a></div><br /><div><br /><div>There are things I’ve thought of discussing here that I just kept very firmly under my cap. This is somewhat out of self-preservation, because once you put things in the public sphere there's always a chance someone's going to make it weird, but that's not really all of the why. It's... <i>already</i> weird. It's weird, and uncomfortable, and weird. It's a reality-questioning weird. It's a "Wait, what the hell is my entire life about then?" weird. And that realization lead to a simple truth: This blog has a purpose. It's meant to be a signpost hammered into the ground for someone as lost and witless as I was (and whooooboy). Life is to goddamned short to argue with yourself about things that, ultimately, only matter to the people they matter to (and we'll get back to that). </div><div><br /></div><div>So here's something I was going to talk about a while ago, and dusted off to finally talk about now.<div><span></span><span><a name='more'></a></span><div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">☙ ⋅˙⋅ ❧</span></div><br />Here is the timeline of how I got into <i>all this</i> to the best of my active recollection, and you’ll see bits and bobs of it across my blog: <br /><br /><blockquote><span style="color: #660000;">I was a tween. Weird, bad, spiritual, things happened, and I prayed to get rid of them, because I was taught to believe this would be effective. <i>It was not effective.</i><br /><br />So I stopped doing that, and went the other way of believing in nothing, because if it's not real then it can't hurt me. <i>It still could.</i></span> </blockquote><blockquote><span style="color: #660000;">Eventually, I caved in and did an internet search at the library for “Ghost (or it may have been “demon”) attacking me” and… well… that was quite like what I was experiencing. And even if it wasn't that, it couldn't hurt to try those solutions, right? My skeptical learning thus far had said to test and question. So, let's test and question.</span></blockquote><blockquote><span style="color: #660000;">A local shop sells me a few items, gives me a few pointers on how to use them. It did <i>something</i>, which was more success than I'd had so far. Thus flows the entirety of my practice - 99% led by intuition, the two or three things I could find on internet access still paid for in minutes (or at my very bible-belt library) and spirit guidance.</span></blockquote><div><br />That is what I remember, getting close to 2.5 decades later. And, stop me if I’ve said this before, but <i>I have an absolutely terrible memory.</i><br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><b><i>A Swift Kick In The Ass From My Childhood.</i></b></div><br />I took a nice afternoon walk one day, to a place I used to frequent as a kid. I had a walk, had a sit, poked around in the leaves looking for morels and had a nice thermos of coffee. Something caught my eye in the trees: A small scrap of cloth, still tied to the broken remnants of a sanded and poly-coated cedar stick. I recognized it instantly, faded as it was. It had once been blue, and part of a worn out pillowcase. A little dagger-twist of deja vous, and suddenly…<br /><i><br /><span style="color: #660000;">Oh! How could I forget- Wait… What?</span></i><br /><br />In that singular rush of memory it came back: That pillow case had been cut in half to use as a rags, and one half had been painted into a kind of flag on the kitchen floor with my best friend. Why we had done this was foggy, but I remembered that we painted it and took it out into the woods. I remembered that I went back several times with it by myself and eventually I’d firmly wedged the stick and left it.<br /><br />Curiosity piqued, I spent days digging through old boxes of stuff in search of the only possible lead I have left: my childhood diary. If it involved my best friend, chances are I’d documented it in those bordering-on-neon pages. The entries are almost impossible to read (spelling was lost on me at that age, to say nothing of my persistently terrible penmanship), but I slowly teased out a few things. These entries aren't dated, but it’s somewhere in the nebulous territory after I was nine but before twelve, when I'd gotten a new diary.<br /><br />As I read, little memories kicked up. Jogged by the words, encouraged by the hints of smell still trapped between the pages, and suddenly things felt so strange. An entire chunk of “me” that I’d forgotten is there, and it’s only the things 'worth' writing down.<br /><br />Then I found the right entry: My friend had stayed the night for my birthday, and we had done these handful of fun things and painted 'the' flag and walked around and then we watched a movie and she had to go home. <br /><br />I turned back a handful of pages, and something caught my eye, so I read. To paraphrase:<br /><blockquote><span style="color: #660000;">I’d had a dream of riding on a 'weird talking pig' to a 'mountain' that was in [the woods] where people were gathered around a fire (<i>Uh...</i>) I was ‘too little’ to be there, but the fact that I was there was very important and so I was handed a flag and told to stand at the back and welcome new people - that this was my job 'for now'. (<i>Oooookay...</i>) After this people turned into 'monsters', and there was 'thanksgiving dinner' and then I rode my pig back home. (<i>Oh hell.</i>)</span></blockquote>There was a little sketch (the bit that’d caught my eye) of the flag. It was… not a design a child would just pull out of their ass. And it was an almost, somewhat, familiar one... (See: "A banner hangs from a tall forked staff , blazoned with bold heraldry. [...] Like any heraldry is an amalgamation of what I have inherited, with a twist or flourish to identify it as mine." - <a href="https://rootandrock.blogspot.com/2017/11/i-heard-sound-pt-2.html" target="_blank">I Heard the Sound... pt. 2</a>). I sat there for a moment, understandably going: <i>Wait… what? Wait… WHAT?!</i> I don’t have any <i>active</i> recollection of this. All that’s left are pages in a diary, written in the limited vocabulary and comprehension of a kid. There were a lot of similar entries, too. It seemed that 90% of what I wrote about was dreams, or my best friend visiting, or how much I loved my mom, grandma, or pets. Sometimes whole entries were about animals I saw near the road and how I hoped they were okay. I have apparently passed through life utterly unchanged. </div><div><br />That period of time was right about when my severe, life-threatening, allergies started. Which means this is right about the time I started pounding antihistamines to <i>not die</i>. Which, as I’ve discovered as an adult, 1: Acts as a kind of ad-hoc flying ointment (anticholinergics just sorta <i>do</i> that) 2: absolutely scrambles my brain. I’ll live my life normally enough, and then all memory of the drugged period of time sort of drips off of my brain like water off a duck's back. There's even a few hazy recollections of things I wrote about (I almost kind of remember having gone to see a particular movie, for example - mostly I remember that it was not age-appropriate and the talk my parents had with me afterward).<br /><br />In the scrambled, truncated, fragmented, timeline of my existence… I guess a lot of things are missing, and waiting for just the right breeze on the wind to jab them into life again? I thought that this - all of this - <i>started</i> with that entity attacking me a<i>nd I was likely very wrong. </i><br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><b><i>Consequences of Pacts you didn’t know you made,</i></b></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b><i>before you were old enough to understand them.</i></b></div><br />With a sharpened awareness of what I was looking for outside of Childhood BFF's name I found quite a lot of dreams with a lot of <i>substance</i>. In one I described in sparse detail something akin to an <i>induction</i>. Other dreams had instruction in things that, in hindsight, are pretty witchy. That entity may well have been attacking not at random, but because I was already a sworn, avowed, member of those hillside congregations, utterly unknown to the me that emerged on the other side of the benadryl haze. Someone/thing decided to pick off the apparent weak link: The child who did not<i> understand. </i><br /><br />I don’t know what to think of it, to be honest. It's all a lot to wrap your head around, and even though I've had quite a while to do my brain-wrapping... it's just still <i>a lot</i>. I’d completely forgotten this stuff. The area where my memory starts to pick up with any kind of consistency was well into my teens when I’d figured out my allergy triggers and stopped being drugged to the gills. So, reading back over it is… <i>well, it’s a mind fuck</i>.<br /><br />I have no reason to doubt these diary entries. I jealously guarded that thing because it was the only truly private thing I had. I also have no reason to doubt it because I still have those sorts of dreams now, and have for as long as I <i>can </i>actively remember. I thought this was the <i>result</i> of my witching, but it’s entirely possible I had that the wrong way around. And that realization makes me reflect heavily on why some folks took my incessant badgering seriously and actually taught me how to get my crap under control. It’s also a shame I don’t <i>actively</i> remember a lot of what I was taught by them for the same reasons that I don’t <i>actively</i> remember those early dreams - and Oaths being Oaths, I didn't write a lot down about that stuff at the time. </div><div><br /></div><div><div style="text-align: center;"><b><i>The Tiniest Crisis of Practice. </i></b></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b><i><br /></i></b></div>It reframed almost everything. It threw into question a lot of what I think I know about my childhood because honestly I might not know jack shit. It certainly threw into question the core of how my practice started, and why some things happen the way they happen. It did, for a moment, make me ask myself if any of it is 'real' <i>... which ...</i></div><div> <br />I know that I am not the first person to have dreams and experiences like these. Let's just set that in stone right there. There’s far too many historical attestations and accounts of such things to ever engage in that level of hubris. I would not have had my nether-regions pucker in extreme panic at the reading of riding a pig to a hilltop congregation of shape-changing revelers had there not been attestations aplenty of said Wild Parties. There are thousands who have dreamed these dreams and seen these sights. Whether or not they are objectively real doesn’t matter - these experiences happen, broadly and yet <i>specifically</i>. <br /><br />I know that I am deeply and profoundly fulfilled by these practices and experiences. And, regardless of an objective or subjective reality that fulfillment and contentment is not something to ignore or turn aside - there’s precious little fulfillment to be had, and you’ve got to really grab on with both hands when you find it.<br /><br />I believe, then, that it is probably for the best that I continue to do what I do, and share what I share when/where/how I can. To act as a signpost for some other traveler sorting this shit out of dreams and half-memories, having every molecule of their posterior clench up at the realization that they were doing <i>Things</i> before they even knew what those<i> Things</i> were.</div><div><br /></div><div>This is what I mean by "traditional" a lot of the time, by the way. More in the literary or folkloric sense. Yes, I've been 'initiated' by others, but unless you were also initiated by the same people <i>and</i> I have invited you to share my circle.. that means approximately nothing. Instead, the part that matters is the very broken continuity reaching through the aeons to spitting ocher against the back of your hand in a blackened cave to touch the spirits of the animals dwelling within the folds of the earth. </div><div><br /></div><div>And about the "Real" part - Let me be very clear: The dreams I’ve had could’ve been 'just dreams' or full on 'spirit world' experiences. <i>I don’t care and it doesn’t matter</i>. The people who mentored me when I was young could’ve been legit, or liars. <i>I don’t care and it doesn’t matter</i>. The books I’ve read, the people I’ve spoken to, the experiences I’ve had could all be a heap of nonsense and <i>I just don’t care and it just doesn’t matter</i>. <br /><br />I share these things to preach to the choir, to hopefully assist others walking an often difficult and crooked path, and offer something to those seeking and striving. Will “that's bullshit!” fill my fridge? Will it fill my heart to bursting with the joy and ecstasy of the sabbat? Will tearing myself up over what this all is, rather than it's use and function do me or anyone else any bit of good? No, it will not. <i>Therefore I don't care and it doesn’t matter.</i><br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><b><i>And One More For The Road.</i></b></div><br />As I was writing this entry up I decided to talk to my dad a little bit about dreams and dreaming. He’s been telling me about dreaming of my mom, which feels fairly natural… except, well… the way he describes those dreams is pretty familiar. <br /><br />He described some of the same dream landmarks I’ve seen, and some of the same beings. He described the abnormally enlarged areas of woodland, and the way the plants and trees danced in the darkness. He asked me, quite conspiratorially, if maybe the place where I grew up was a little… <i>woooooooeeeeoooo</i>. If maybe there were some kind of roads that “things” used and he’d just happened to put his home on one. If people being here that weren’t afraid of “<i>woooeeeooo</i>” things might have given them permission to happen here. If maybe my mom, a little <i>wooooooeeeeoooo</i> herself, might’ve unconsciously picked this place. </div><div><br /></div><div>Well, then... <br /><br />Chicken and the egg. It doesn't matter which came first.</div></div></div></div></div>Scyllahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03822031765851992717noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1208084550257016582.post-41976841625907754142020-11-07T11:47:00.000-06:002020-11-07T11:47:02.860-06:00An Attempt Was Made. <p><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdnOS61rMAxYxYn9hNEVDU9Ith7QNAAjOs-AIHoWPpAnn_0mbRnZQIYD2sez1kIttCONNUx2wqq0VfLmL9uWbCxUJdQiSkX0Z3RktivwH4oCmakkfR_CWCK6MBVGqN3E9Ve72YBimrIOo/s550/blog_fall.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="550" data-original-width="550" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdnOS61rMAxYxYn9hNEVDU9Ith7QNAAjOs-AIHoWPpAnn_0mbRnZQIYD2sez1kIttCONNUx2wqq0VfLmL9uWbCxUJdQiSkX0Z3RktivwH4oCmakkfR_CWCK6MBVGqN3E9Ve72YBimrIOo/s320/blog_fall.jpg" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">I wrote the start of this post, originally, as we were moving into winter here in North America in 2018. It’s that time again, a full two years later. Some of these posts languished for a long time, and change a lot along the way.</span></p><span id="docs-internal-guid-4728be5b-7fff-ae84-4f6c-eb9fae60ee6a"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The last two years? Bitter ashes. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Where to start? Do I want to start? Is this a thing I do anymore? What is the goal? Am I the person I was when I started? Am I enough the same that this-as-this makes sense?</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i><span style="color: #660000;"></span></i></span></p><blockquote><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #660000;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>“The radio silence isn’t about a lack of ideas, or topics, but a feeling like there’s simply no ‘room’ for me to exist.” </i>-</span><a href="https://rootandrock.blogspot.com/2017/08/its-fine-or-it-will-be.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> It’s fine, Or it Will Be. </span></a></span></p><span style="color: #660000;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #660000;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>“When your heart and soul starts being co-opted by the terminally misguided the water gets muddy.”</i> - </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><a href="https://rootandrock.blogspot.com/2016/10/ol-bent-and-bowed.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">Ol’ Bent and Bowed.</a></span></span></p></blockquote><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I stopped blogging for a lot of reasons. None of them were exactly intentional. I emphasize that this is a "travelogue" type of blog. That it is, in essence, a digital journal. Anyone who has kept a journal for any length of time will understand an indelible and immutable truth - when you look back over old entries you realize how much has changed. Things change, things stay the same, and there it is - your blog or my blog - a monument to all of the things which are and are not.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.656; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Some of the me you’ve seen is now woefully out of date, yet still new to you. I, and the image made of me, exist at odds, out of step and out of sync. And that’s very weird to experience. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I got tired of bullying. I mean, who isn’t tired of that crap? But I got especially tired of the middle-school bullying-by-gossip. I heard back a lot of things being said about me that were bad enough to cause me to reach out, and let me tell ya: When you reach out to the person triangulating others against you and ask them, honestly, why they did it they do not respond politely.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I got tired of the over-familiarity. It was a real shock to me that running a blog meant some folks developed a parasocial attachment. I thought you had to be a lot “bigger” to have that happen, and it turns out I was very wrong. Some of those folks thought we were tight enough for ribbing, flirtation and coarse humor - we weren’t - and they didn’t appreciate it when this was made clear. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Mostly, though, I just got tired. Trauma is life-altering. It impacts you in ways that you won’t understand until you process and begin to inventory your thinking. The way it affects the brain and the body is exhausting. There were other things, too. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.656; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Take it from the top.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There’s now a hole in my life - caretakers talk about that a lot - that I don’t know how to live with. I’m learning to step around it, over it, not fall into it, but it is there and it is ever-present. For the majority of my life I cared in some capacity for my mother, and in the last decade that intensified to an actual role of “part time caretaker” in fits and starts. There are regrets <i>(thank god that telling her I love her and am proud to be her child was something I was sure I did, often, and emphatically)</i>, there is pain. There is this hole. This missing step in a flight of stairs I took ten times a day. Muscle memory falters, stumbles. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I keep coming back to the phrase “Words ceased existing.” because what is there to say? No matter what hurt I feel, she lost herself, her family and her life. No matter what beliefs or experiences I’ve had I cannot know what transpires past the edge of death. Nothing matters in the face of death, absolutely nothing. Nothing means anything when nothing feels different and everything has changed. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I have not celebrated. What remains of my family made sure to mark birthdays, to make sure we did not let those pass without some acknowledgement, because they are so few <i>(and grow fewer every year)</i>. But on the slow crawl to The Big Two… no thank you.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I could not do my usual witching. Not really. I couldn’t even work my regular job worth a damn - I shudder to think of how very little I scraped by with, monetarily. I did what few things I could. I maintained. I couldn’t find it in me. I’m not sure I could even find </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">me</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> in me. Grief is like unclogging a drain - it’s a normal enough process, but goddamn is it grotesque. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And it’s hard to be the person you want to be - honest and open to a fault with no wistful filter - while also avoiding talking about the elephant in the room. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It is easy for bloggers and influencers to just straight up lie to their audience. I mean, I assume by now everyone’s savvy to the ugliness behind an instagram-ready lifestyle, especially when Witchcraft is involved. They will blog like everyone reading is an intimate friend, they’ll take your money and give you advice, but you’ll never know they had a kid <i>(I don’t)</i>, or a ‘mundane job’ <i>(I do)</i> because it doesn’t fit the picture of the perfect Witch Aesthetic <i>(as if Ye Olde Witch didn’t also have to work a dozen mundane jobs and also wipe with rags and leaves)</i>. You find out years later that their life was on fire all while the content kept rolling at an unaltered. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It’s not a failing as a magician, or as a person, or as<i> (insert category here)</i> to say that one finds themselves in these situations. It’s not a sign of some personal inadequacy to say that the last few years have been trying. It’s not a shame upon anyone that sometimes we falter. Not when the whole world is pushing, crushing, grinding and praying for us to fail.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">For some, the path of - well, whatever this is - is one of total power, total mastery. A blazing triumph over. And when they put that ideology forward-facing, it mutates. They’re never struggling with money, unless it makes a good byline. They’re never sad unless it’s adequately wistful. They never falter because they, good readers, have meticulously edited and curated their public-facing-media to ensure you cannot see the steep slope they just <i>(to borrow a phrase from my grandpa)</i> ate shit the whole way down. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">That’s a deeply </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Problematic</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> way to live. Maybe a good maladaptive coping strategy in the meantime, but the lies we tell ourselves by telling them to others are often the ones that smack us upside the head the hardest when the truth bounces back into shape. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And the truth is that for a long time, everything has really, really, sucked. So I didn’t post, because I refuse to lie, reframe, or instagram-ready it up and I honestly didn’t want to dig through and litigate my suffering. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Peeking out of the doom-hole.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I’ve begun to sort through the pieces of wreckage left behind from, well… a lot of mistaken steps made with the best intentions. To be brutally honest, I spent the last decade having The Good And Dutiful Woman narrative crammed down my throat <i>(<span style="color: #660000;">"Accept that you'll be working twenty hours a day and come home to find that your partner has gone through the house like a typhoon and not lifted a finger to clean it up. If you don't clean it yourself you're the asshole! That's your domain and your job!"</span>)</i> with a few extra scoops of the Sacrifice For Others Even If It Costs You Your Joy <i>(<span style="color: #660000;">"It's so selfish to want to be happy if that happiness isn't found through service to others!"</span>)</i>, and that’s enough torture to make you think “Eh, maybe if I just compromise a little…” and then you’ve compromised entirely and no one else has, and you’re a stranger to yourself in your own existence sliding into a second nervous breakdown. But life is hard and complex and often quite shitty and you take on the problems as you can take them out<i> (more on that in the future)</i>. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I managed to celebrate the First Winter this year, and this year it was not Last Harvest, but a proper Winter, bared teeth and all. I’ve been managing to work steadily. I struggled up from maintenance to headway. I’ve even started to write again.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Of course, as I wrote this the election is/was still being counted with an optimistic call for sanity. I have no idea what the future will bring. It may shove me right off my precarious little ledge back down into the pit. My life may become very unpleasant, or things may merely return to the mildly progressive normalcy we’ve been slowly building for the last forever. Ideally the last four years were some kind of extinction burst fever spasm of decades of lead poisoning. We can hope, we can look toward the dawn, and we can ideally not lie to ourselves or others about the realities of our lives along the way. The only way out is through, and the only way through is with the occasional helping hand. </span></p><div><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div></span>Scyllahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03822031765851992717noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1208084550257016582.post-66328106514452651522020-02-15T10:58:00.000-06:002020-02-15T11:00:07.684-06:00The Book Stayed Empty<br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh97OOtO97yZbY1fv1ce44O8XK8P0i5LCCW2WbPLRypXT0qrMhi9ROmXeHTgx3-1HANe8O-uk4gpAr9NmgFCFxNV8b-O9lf_wltu6ptwk4ljuHY6CAgLiuVskeFfFAqW31vWVqhyPer6bg/s1600/books-4812032_640.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh97OOtO97yZbY1fv1ce44O8XK8P0i5LCCW2WbPLRypXT0qrMhi9ROmXeHTgx3-1HANe8O-uk4gpAr9NmgFCFxNV8b-O9lf_wltu6ptwk4ljuHY6CAgLiuVskeFfFAqW31vWVqhyPer6bg/s400/books-4812032_640.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small; text-align: start;">Courtesy bohdanchreptak at Pixabay </span></td></tr>
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A while ago I woke from a dream very suddenly, distressed and upset even as sleep shed off of me. I had been at an intimate coven gathering in the dream. We sat in the circle, perhaps before or after ritual, enjoying what looked to be a very fine charcuterie board, and sundry nibbles. Each of us tending to tasks one usually does “in circle”. Someone off beside me was grinding herbs slowly and methodically, chanting as they worked. Another was plaiting cords, the tail end hooked over their outstretched big toe. I was copying into my Book. It was the sight of the book that woke me, actually. The realization - in my semi-lucid, go-with-the-flow, state - that I knew what that little book was. It exists in the real world, y’see.<br /><br />I’ve been hanging onto this book for… well… we’ll say 20 years at this point. Honestly, it could be a little more. The book itself went out of print a while ago, which is weird but also understandable since it’s a blank, lined, journal. I remember buying two of them. One was cannibalized, covered in leather, filled with handmade paper and gifted to a friend. The other, plus the original “text block” of the first, were squirrelled away, wrapped in paper, beneath my altar.<br /><br />I knew the moment I saw this book that it was supposed to be with me and I even knew what it was for. It was for the book of shadows. Not “a” book of shadows, nor “my” book of shadows. Nah… it was for THE book of shadows. One of the properly-received Wiccan ones. <br /><br />When I knelt at my altar and did one of the early “solo initiations” from a mass-market paperback it was done with the hope that one day I’d experience a ‘proper’ one, and fill that little book. <br /><br />In that moment, saying my very heartfelt words about the whole thing (speaking directly to the gods and to those who have gone before), I felt very strongly that I needed to bring something to the table should I ever approach a prospective coven - I took this as spirit-guidance, something to do with being some specific and subtle connotation of that “Proper person, properly prepared” phrase. That went into the words I spoke - to bring to a coven no less than I would ask of a coven. I felt that if I did not have something unique, novel, and most importantly useful, to offer… then why seek it out? Why take more than I would offer in return? In hindsight such an Oath may have been something of a mistake, but… what’s done is done.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;">
<b><i>So, I learned. </i></b></div>
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<br />Well, then of course I got burned, badly, by many different subsets of the witchcraft and occult communities. The voices of authority never really spoke in a way that sang to my heart, and so I wondered if I belonged there at all. I was filled with knowledge that I sought on my own, trials I endured solo, and initiations between myself and rather dubious sorts. <br /><br />I studied every sort of thing I could afford to have access to. Basics, sure, but also some rather out-there bits of theatrics. I learned to better sew and to draft simple patterns for robes and the like, I learned leatherworking and bookbinding a little more properly, I studied but never really properly practiced smithing, I learned simple woodworking, I already knew pottery, etc. I learned how to make masks and other costumery, how to make flash powder and pyrotechnics, different kinds of puppetry, shadow-theater, phantasmagoria, stage magic, and on and on and on.<br /><br />The book, however, stayed empty.<br /><br />I still have a deep respect for Wicca itself. It moves in it’s own world, orbits its own courses. There is something in that unknown country that calls out, even to this day. <br /><br />It’s sitting in front of me on my desk. It’s gold filigree border striking dozens of memories so deep in my heart that they ring rather than recall. To bring nothing less than I would ask. Well, by then would I not already be my own, sovereign, priest? Would I not have already learned Mysteries? Would I not already have met Them, and known Them, and adored Them in my own way?<br /><br />So, I write my own book. I fill it with the knowledge I have received, details I might otherwise forget (or already partially have), and things that I might want to preserve, should I ever pass this information onward - and I can’t think of a way more proper (for me) than through blood, sweat, and tears. Tucked into the back, behind the text block of dyed paper paper, nestled into the leather flap that wraps the whole thing shut, is the home of that empty book. Maybe still waiting, maybe a reminder.</div>
Scyllahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03822031765851992717noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1208084550257016582.post-91337109548757781152019-04-26T16:36:00.003-05:002019-04-26T16:40:40.149-05:00Don't Be A Dick.<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVydBuFkhtV8YZY0PSl9fjUDJH6TI2r5Y755KyPqz75GpA5Qlc_9IJOlLvoqyBCg9M9S03ki1jyyt5h0PmB0UJGU2EbE3tedi_XyBGAqZEgvlk_Ui3vsD1fyFmZboK7C9eKPHB7qpcWsQ/s1600/people-1316357_640.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="231" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVydBuFkhtV8YZY0PSl9fjUDJH6TI2r5Y755KyPqz75GpA5Qlc_9IJOlLvoqyBCg9M9S03ki1jyyt5h0PmB0UJGU2EbE3tedi_XyBGAqZEgvlk_Ui3vsD1fyFmZboK7C9eKPHB7qpcWsQ/s320/people-1316357_640.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Smugness - courtesy pixabay</td></tr>
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Stop me if you've heard this one before: <i>"I want to be a Witch"</i> says a forum poster. Or, maybe they said <i>"I want to do this spell."</i> or <i>"I want to be initiated."</i>, maybe they said<i> "I'm having a problem with a spirit and I need to get rid of it, but I'm not sure how."</i><br />
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And of course someone else comes in and decides to regurgitate really old, rehashed, horse-shit that doesn't even really apply instead of contributing to the conversation. They spin the old classics: "Readiness", "This isn't (insert fictional media here)", "Red in tooth and claw", "When the seeker...", "Mad, dead..." and they get ass pats for being <i>so wise</i>.<br />
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Because of how long I've been around the net and what I've seen I can tell you that even the nicest and most responsible people will whip out one of these floppy dongers once in a while. OP maybe has a fit or just sulks off. Forum pats itself on the back for a solid month for really stickin' it to that <i>noob/fluffer </i>who was so unserious they couldn't even handle time-tested, sage, wisdom. No one's problems are solved, but the social equilibrium has returned and everyone can get back to the familiar, old, circle-jerk.<br />
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<b><i>"You Aren't Ready."</i></b></div>
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Readiness is complex, I'll give you that. And with a topic inherently steeped in experiential Mysteries, it gets murkier. We can make certain assertions based on common medical and psychological knowledge (brain development, for example) and of course legality. We can say "I don't give any sort of direct advice to anyone under the age of majority for legal reasons." and while I think that's a little unrealistic it's also pretty legitimate. I started doing this stuff when I was in the nebulous age of 12-ish, and while "I turned out fine" might be a bit of a ... stretch, suffice it to say that things would've gone better if people had just thrown links out and left it at that.<br />
<br />
We can even be forthright with that and say "I'm not going to help you because I don't want to become entangled in the fallout. either legal or magical." And again that's maybe harsh but legitimate. However; trying to actively block someone from participating in religious, spiritual, social, and psychological experimentation is shaky ground. Trying to bully or discourage them out of having that interest "for their own good" isn't just shaky, it's morally <i>repugnant</i>. It's just fine to say "here's the bag crap that CAN happen... just so you know" but you don't know their own good, I don't know their own good. What is "best" for them is up to them, and (if they chose) their parents and medical/legal professionals. And no, you don't get a pass because you <u>are</u> a professional unless you are <u>their</u> professional. We have laws about giving unsolicited medical and legal advice for that reason.<br />
<br />
If you can't leave well enough alone then it's better to play at harm reduction than it is to play at interference. Act in the way that best upholds the ideals you're trying to impress upon others rather than trying to herd them into expressing those ideals<i> for</i> you. Don't be a bad role model, even if you aren't a good one.<br />
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<br />
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<i><b>"This Isn't Harry Potter."</b></i></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Also something about fingertip lightning which is more of a Star Wars or maybe Snow White reference but are we really going to split hairs at this stage of the shit show?</i></span></div>
<br />
Setting aside folks with difficulties which preclude a firm grasp on consensus reality, folks know that. Everyone out there, with the rare exception, gets that real life is not a fantasy book or film franchise. Everyone has, with the rare exception, also met someone who probably got that real life isn't a fictional franchise but went ahead in behaving as if it were (and even claiming that it is). This can be because they lack the proper <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mytheme">mytheme</a> or vocabulary to suit their experiences, or because they are <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attention_seeking">fucking lonely</a></i>. The internet is an economy of attention. Some take action and some simply <i>act out</i>.<br />
<br />
So, this "problem" can be fixed by treating people like people and paying more attention to peoples <i>lives</i> and not their <i>stories</i>. By doing the world's least expensive thing and simply being kindhearted. By noticing someone who is behaving oddly and giving them an ear and a framework you can help steer them away from <i>"Last Scion"</i> territory (unless they seem dangerous - never throw yourself under the bus, y'all). Help give them vocabulary and context for the experiences they're having. Maybe they're pulling things out of their ass and having these grandiose tales whittled down to size will make "Engaged in a soul-struggle for my very life-blood with an unparalleled Dragon Lord today." less appealing than simply saying "Got into it with some shit at Starbucks on my way to practice today and I've felt funky ever since. I think I got whammied."<br />
<br />
And again - don't be a bad role model even if you aren't a good one. Show your warts once in a while. Most of our lives are mundane. Only in the era of the internet can we so carefully curate things so that only the most sublime, awesome and supernal moments are preserved for all to enjoy. It can give the impression that the whole of a given blogger's life is a fairy tale. People who live their own lives and see the non-curated side of things will wonder if they're lacking - they're not. There are always fallow times, always slow days, and always uninteresting moments.<br />
<br />
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<b><i>"Practical Magic", "The Craft", "Charmed", "Sabrina"</i></b></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i><span style="font-size: x-small;"> Blah blah blah blah.</span></i></div>
<br />
And, yes, some people are invested in re-enchanting their lives. They put a spin on mundane events because seeing something Other in the SSDD gets them through. They find inspiration in the fictional when the factual fails to stimulate or comfort. Others like the aesthetic of a fictional take on magic to the point that they want to craft their experience around that, or work "pop culture magic" from it. Most of us would love to live in the house from Practical Magic or The Addams Family and there's not a goddamn thing wrong with that.<br />
<br />
By and large the proverbial hater is not going to see any difference between <i>The Hobbit-Channeling Cult Leader</i> (still racking up casualties almost twenty years on)<i> </i>and the average self-professed Traditional Witch. They won't care. The more you care the more you've lost (because caring is generally a sin these days). The haters, as they say, are gon' hate. Stop caring about respectability politics in others, because it will never, ever, matter.<br />
<br />
There can be a point at which a persona-play, or LARP exercise lapses into unhealthy and boundary-violating. If people are unhealthy for you then you have to make the tough choices, and hopefully not make those choices in a bad way. I know I certainly burned a lot of bridges trying to keep myself well, and it's a shitty thing.<br />
<br />
As far as clothing/trappings; I have almost exclusively worn black since I was twelve and I am one of the first people out of the gate who will suggest others learn when to dress "nicely", "professionally" and "formally". Take the lumps you get when you violate social contracts, or even just social non-binding agreements and do it anyway if that's what you want to do.<br />
<i><b><br /></b></i>
<br />
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<i><b>Red In Tooth And Claw.</b></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-size: x-small;">Mad, Dead, Poet. </span></i></div>
<br />
We've spent the entire time period between Ol' Uncle Gerald outing his Coven to the world and last Tuesday alternating between How Fucking Dangerous Witchcraft Really Is, Tremble Ye Dabblers and <i>Witchcraft Is Harmless, No Scary Shit Here.</i><br />
<br />
It's time to stop regurgitating the same useless and unhelpful sentiments and start explaining the why behind them. People don't need soundbites, they need quality information. There are a million things in this world that are far more of a present danger than soliciting Ol' Scratch to give you that stone-cold foot-long. If The-General-You don't want it on your head then just don't say anything or call on someone you know has that endless well of patience and good notes.<br />
<br />
We trust other humans with the unaided operation of speeding land-rockets of metal and explosions based on their ability to behave properly and hang on to the rules for about fifteen minutes in front of someone with a clipboard, one time, when they were sixteen. I'm not gonna openly suggest everyone get up to everything that I got up to but I'm also not going to treat them like they're any dumber than I was, and frankly? I got up to some things. Some really, really, really, wild stuff. <b>I can barely <i>spell </i>hypocrite. I certainly don't want to be one.</b><br />
<span title="To Me, And Your Mileage May Vary"><br /></span>
So, Witchcraft <i>can</i> be dangerous, but that doesn't mean that it <i>always</i> is. Witchcraft can be dangerous because it can change your worldview in rapid and drastic ways, or sometimes not. It depends. Witchcraft can be dangerous because it can change your position in a spiritual hierarchy that you're only peripherally aware of. Or sometimes not. <i>It depends</i>. Witchcraft can be dangerous because it can alter your actual perceptions of reality. Also sometimes not. Depends. It can be dangerous if those things are things that will imbalance a delicate psycho-spiritual system in the life of a given individual. Every single person is different and no one, but <i><b>no one</b></i>, can confidently tell some stranger on the internet who and what they are and how these things will impact them.<br />
<br />
My personal take on these things is that nature is not anthropomorphic. We are. Choosing to apply human morality to nonhuman things will usually work for a while until it doesn't. Ask anyone who misinterpreted the mew of their cat as "Yes, please continue to rub my belly" and not "get your hand off of me."<br />
<br />
I am all too happy to issue pretty stout warnings about specific things - "This particular thing has a pretty fucked cost-reward ratio" or adding "but will positively impact the cost-reward ratio of THIS other particular thing later on." (which is usually true of the really fucky cost-reward stuff, btw). I will be as helpful and concise as I can about the spectrum of possible pitfalls around something as long as that is a <i>specific</i> something.<br />
<br />
As time goes on I see admonitions without some kind of follow-up more as gatekeeping than honest cautionary warnings. I just cannot get behind telling people that they're not to even approach witchcraft, ever, for any reason because...<i> regugitated soundbite.</i> Especially if I'm not totally willing to lay out the why and wherefore of my warning in explicit detail.<br />
<br />
Knowing what is a potential area of heightened danger can take experience, and a lot of us with some experience have a hard time telling others where those areas begin and end (though we're pretty spot on about when something resides squarely in Nopesville). So, obviously it's not a perfect system to begin with. There are large gray areas.<br />
<br />
<br />
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<i><b>"When the Seeker is ready a Teacher will appear."</b></i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i><span style="font-size: x-small;">Alternately when the teacher is ready to deal with the seeker then they'll actually start responding to inquiries. </span></i></div>
<br />
<br />
This is a quick, short-hand, way of saying "I will, in no uncertain terms, not be teaching you a goddamn thing" without taking any of the bad guy status or blame on oneself. Student ain't ready (see first part), and therefore teacher is totally free to just ignore the issue. Student is jumping the gun, and therefore can be admonished sorely <i>while </i>being ignored. Social equilibrium re-established.<br />
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<br /></div>
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People with occult knowledge are not magical whack-a-mole machines, though. They don't spring out of the ground the moment you've hit your stride. They're always there, hanging around, often freely sharing advice left and right. Some of 'em run blogs or podcasts or write books. I learn more useful things from the facebook posts of other magicians who are just casually shooting the shit than I do from a lot of books (because these are living, vital, ongoing, conversations where questions can be formulated, discussed, and answered). But I also learn a lot of neat shit from books, so take it as it comes.<br />
<br />
When the student understands they realize the teacher has already been there teaching for a while. I suppose that looks like they just "appeared", though.<br />
<br />
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<i> </i><b><i>Stage Magic.</i></b></div>
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<b><i><br /></i></b></div>
I've talked about this in "<a href="http://rootandrock.blogspot.com/2011/11/dangerous-knowledge.html">Dangerous Knowledge</a>", to some extent. But I think the real reason for the gatekeeping is the same reason stage magicians will put one-another under pain of decades of harassment and inability to get a gig: To keep secrets. It's because the secret is literally the dumbest shit you've ever heard. There's fuckin' fake, plastic, fingertip on the end of their finger and the ball (the ball was sponge by the way) is stuffed into that. The rabbit is usually in a pouch hidden in their clothes. The doves are stuffed into little pockets in their coats and this works because doves don't give a fuck if it's dark and close and kinda just chill until someone scoops them out and flings them into the air. The card is behind his hand, and he used math, dexterity and practice to make you pick the one he wanted. The skill is not the mechanism, the skill is in executing the mechanism where you don't notice it. Magic!<br />
<br />
I think that a lot of the gatekeeping is to prevent anyone not on the other side from figuring out that the secret is bullshit. That the big, bold, vibrant key to doing this HaRdXcOrE woo-woo is as simple and complex as an introduction and a handshake (or getting Big D's cappocola and therefore being entitled to a share of his kingdom and all it holds). The secret to being who you want to be is faking it until you make it, and being who you want to be until you don't have to exert effort to be it any more.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b><i>Most Of It Is About Social Hierarchy. </i></b></div>
<br />
A lot of the narrative returns to how long someone's been practicing or how hard they've struggled to get to whatever position they feel they have. Anyone new who might be having an experience could upset that by dint of their experience being real (as opposed to a constructed narrative), or due to having ideas or beliefs that might challenge the existing power structure. There is a 'queen bee' phenomenon, and by extension 'knitting circle of evil' phenomenon that goes on and we often turn a blind eye toward it lest we suddenly be on the receiving end of it (sometimes for the second, third, or hundredth time).<br />
<br />
I can tell you that my formative experiences in the occult were largely 30-somethings telling me to get back in my <i>place</i>, stop being a hormonal <i>little girl</i>, and to quit <i>pretending</i> to be a witch because I was <i>embarrassing</i> myself. In those words. When it turned out that I was having real experiences (and furthermore refused to be told that I wasn't) the tone shifted to "you are dangerous and anathema."<br />
<br />
Now, I will take a brief moment to savor the irony of the following: I have seen some of the exact same assholes touting me as one of their favorite sources of info, and simultaneously using me as a cudgel with which to beat the same kids they've been beating on for twenty years. My experiences, formerly dangerous or delusional, are now the flavor of the day.<br />
<br />
The behaviors in these groups closely follow patterns of Cult formation, generic bullying, and general abuse. I didn't know it then, but I know it now and I am all too happy to share that information so that people who behave in that way are clearly marked out to new folks. This is why I rarely join forums, and frequently stop participating - there are a lot of bullies out there floating around.<br />
<br />
(Note: This is an older draft which has been spruced up and published. Please forgive any strangeness in tonal changes, or perhaps dated language that slipped by)<br />
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Scyllahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03822031765851992717noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1208084550257016582.post-4231459148052233002019-04-19T15:06:00.001-05:002019-04-19T15:06:48.731-05:00All The Way Down.<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJgCDhRm7g7-PnEUnDvwxcjWNu0XhaQQJW0zp6q4hHmE5fM_rZ0HYjUYc_6K_AFp4szlClj8fuDEiqEK5IDq1oMOiZd21OMddjy2ekawMI86E9vCO8FFiFVeqlKoxIw4JtNYAAsm9IA5c/s1600/blag.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="545" data-original-width="750" height="290" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJgCDhRm7g7-PnEUnDvwxcjWNu0XhaQQJW0zp6q4hHmE5fM_rZ0HYjUYc_6K_AFp4szlClj8fuDEiqEK5IDq1oMOiZd21OMddjy2ekawMI86E9vCO8FFiFVeqlKoxIw4JtNYAAsm9IA5c/s400/blag.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Interior of a ceramic kiln littered with the confetti-like shards of a misfired piece. </td></tr>
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I've tried writing this post half a dozen times, I think. I'm no closer now to the 'right words' than I was on the first try. I think it's just time to do it... so I stop thinking about how not-respectful and not-right it would be to put anything else first and "pretend".<br />
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(TW, just... bad things. Medical stuff, death, dark times.)</div>
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Things haven't been good for a while. This was not a long drop and a short stop - This was a train buckling and zigzagging it’s way off the rails at 24 miles an hour, spitting barrels of naphtha into a protected wetland, while on fire.<br />
<br />This last year was the worst year of my life. I don't have the words or the disposition to package it any more nicely than: My mother lost her ten year battle with cancer.<br /><br />
The dumbest part is that, through a decade of this shit, we still never saw it coming. She had always beaten it... therefore she would always beat it, right? Until she didn't. By the time the doctors ever impressed upon us that she would not be recovering, or said the word “terminal” it was a matter of days. It was a brutal and uncompromising murder at the hands of a ruthless killer.<br /><br />I did not exist this last year. Words didn't exist. <i>Nothing existed. </i><br />
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I want to say I took solace in my craft, but I didn't. I want to say that I worked hard and accomplished goals, but I didn't. All I did was hang on by my toes, and scream when no one could hear me.<br /><br />I have not breathed in almost a year. The first Thanksgiving without my mother, the first Christmas, the first of her birthdays passing without her. A vacuous, empty, hole. 2018 was the longest decade of my life, and the shortest, ugliest, weekend. I only remember the smallest bits, here and there, most of them fairly awful. I remember only scant moments in void where anything at all was or is... and I hear that's actually pretty normal.<br /><br />I wish I could speak more on it, honestly. I wish I could put it through that wistful blog filter, but I can't. There's nothing to squeeze out of this that is not turning personal suffering into inspo-porn, and <i>no thank you. </i></div>
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I survived. I may, in fact, even be alive. There may be a day when living becomes thriving. I don't know yet. At least I've said the thing, and if words come back maybe I will say more things. </div>
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Scyllahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03822031765851992717noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1208084550257016582.post-69614514984766267142017-11-16T16:56:00.001-06:002017-11-16T16:56:09.466-06:00I Heard The Sound... pt. 2<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjECWJ17oS725TzYbEPj04WWJF-oCHSFmzPo8PlZ0m_hOTgrr1-DbsYxYaQY5Ajai_Fvvq27XdtB_woNI6NtS3D1hPUaHcGDQcFCiifzyPc3BbTruRFXdHH2XfbluiQewVnpWJAiPYzOCI/s1600/snowy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="563" data-original-width="750" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjECWJ17oS725TzYbEPj04WWJF-oCHSFmzPo8PlZ0m_hOTgrr1-DbsYxYaQY5Ajai_Fvvq27XdtB_woNI6NtS3D1hPUaHcGDQcFCiifzyPc3BbTruRFXdHH2XfbluiQewVnpWJAiPYzOCI/s320/snowy.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<em><strong>Fall's A-Fallin.</strong></em></div>
<em><strong><br /></strong></em>
A month ago if I stood very still, tilted my head at the right angle, and thought about it really hard I could almost feel summer becoming autumn. Today it was raining and I could smell that distinct smell of “FALL” in the air. It felt like my shoulders could finally un-tense, like my lungs could finally fill up.<br />
<br />
For the last decade or so fall has simply felt like a less energetic continuation of summer. The winters, some with days so warm and sunny that the grass is still green and flowers still bloom, have been awkward and tepid. It scares the <em>shit</em> out of me, honestly.<br />
<br />
On a mundane, average, complaining level - doing much of anything in oppressive heat is almost impossible. It’s punishing. It’s not been so bad as a couple of summers in my childhood (we didn’t have AC, just a couple of big swamp coolers and honestly it was better to just go sit in the water runoff from them than indoors anyway), but it’s been it’s own kind of bad. On a deeper level? This is… wrong. <em>It feels wrong</em>. It tastes wrong. It’s like something deep, deep, deep, down hundreds or thousands of feet below the ground has <em>twisted</em>.<br />
<br />
It started in 2010 when a tornado pissed a stripe across my neighborhood. There had been subtle wrongness that year and it amplified as the summer stretched on into fall and then into a winter where we had an actual blizzard - something almost unheard-of here. Then, a year and change later when the droughts were so severe that literally none of the state was drought-free and you could see cracks form in the soil that were so deep that they’d swallow as much metal tape measure as you could give them.<br />
<br />
Then came the earthquakes - categorized as ‘swarms’- sounding like bombs going off before everything would rattle, shake and drop off shelves. And finally, I heard the sound of chainsaws. First in dreams - which was terrifying but manageable - and then only a few months later in the flesh. An oil pipeline being laid through old, wakeful, spirited forest. It nearly drove me nuts.<br />
<br />
The land that had felt welcoming and peaceful felt, instead, pissed off and carnivorous. Not at me specifically, but enough hostility floated around to make me nervous and I’m not ashamed to admit that my adventures got less <em>adventurous</em>. Even the most mundane tree-trimming or lawn-mowing would be met with spooky results. Busted belts, busted blades, tools rusting up so quickly it’s like they were on fast-forward - things I honestly didn’t talk about at the time because they were horrifying and very physical and that stuff is the stuff that you exercise discretion about.<br />
<br />
This compounded with Other Things meant that I my head down, and did the Work in the best ways that I could. I multiplied my usual offerings, and made sure that when delivering them I did not allow my newfound reticence to color my emotions or energy. I didn’t want to feel fear, and I sure as hell didn’t want to show it.<br />
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<em><strong>The Land That I Love. </strong></em></div>
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<em><strong><br /></strong></em></div>
I try to hold a picture in my mind of my childhood antics and the utter trust I had in the world. I try to hold a picture in my mind of decades of invested spirit work and the knowledge that I love this land and that it, generally, tolerates me. I try to hold on to that picture but it slips. It slips again and again.<br />
It’s not just here, either. As I type this, Hurricane Harvey is doing it’s best to drown Texas and Louisiana. And when I revisited this draft it was Irma eating it’s way through island chains. When I came back again it was with the knowledge that Puerto Rico had been essentially leveled. It should not be a partisan political statement to say “It seems like storms like these are getting worse and worse.” <em>And yet, here we are. </em><br />
<em><br /></em>
As someone who has intimate ties to landscape and environment this is <em>terrifying</em>. My spirituality doesn’t die in the absence of the land, but it fundamentally changes. And maybe it changes into something that I don’t want to be involved in anymore. Maybe it becomes a relationship, failed on both ends, that simply has to dissolve before it gets toxic. I can already feel things here shifting and changing into a landscape that is at once familiar and unfamiliar. Like going home after a long absence - it’s all the same and all different.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<em><strong>Dreams. </strong></em></div>
<br />
A banner hangs from a tall forked staff, blazoned with bold heraldry, lit by the flickering light of a fire and swaying in the night breeze. Behind it is a wood, ancient and deep, perhaps once a lined processional road that is now overshadowed on all sides by primeval wildness. Before it is the clear cut, the gentle slope down toward the lane, the moat, and finally rising again at the feet of an impossible fortification of gray-green glass.<br />
<br />
It has been other banners before. The blazon changes depending upon who bears it, the bearer depends upon who leads, who leads depends upon the Queen - Fairest of fair, darker and brighter than the moon, shining with the cutting fire of a gem. For now I bear the banner. Like any heraldry is an amalgamation of what I have inherited, with a twist or flourish to identify it as mine. Though being confused for another is not likely now, not as likely as it was even ten years ago, or twenty - when the field was drowned in fighting bodies, rolling like the waves of a lake.<br />
<br />
There are so few at the fireside, now. I bear the banner, lead the procession, keep the tally, mind the fire - once each a job held by a separate person. We wait until the light of dawn comes but it is three, and then only five. And stays five. One of my number sits out the ‘battle’ - we arm wrestle because no one wants to actually hurt anyone else. With so few there is no need to rip each-other apart. No one really wins or loses. In the end it’s more of an agreement based upon respect and admiration - who kept the fire burning, who greeted whom with the most warmth, who (in short) offered the most hospitality despite the lackluster turnout.<br />
<br />
For the last decade or so fall has simply felt like a less energetic continuation of summer. The world neither dies, nor is it reborn. The spirit world starves, and grows angry. The winters, some with days so warm and sunny that the grass is still green and flowers still bloom, have been awkward and tepid. No one attends the reveries because the land cannot draw them forth, and in their absence the wheel fails to turn.<br />
<br />
It scares the <em>shit</em> out of me, honestly.<br />
<br />(This entry was first published Sept 27 on my Patreon - and moved here in November. Dates may, therefore, be askew)Scyllahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03822031765851992717noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1208084550257016582.post-75904102895130338432017-08-27T16:45:00.000-05:002017-08-27T17:02:41.945-05:00It's fine or ... it will be. <table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhiu-VckozZMt5ujX_Ah9vxp_AuX3CIfnaCGDEm2boQEtKBz80gbNm53QDnaJInLRU9gsSK4w5UPl3oSVCkFrnHwomI8xVc_oQw1UyB62lMClSQW2wrJS0OWIHMPZDEXY2PaGx0ynsXWhU/s1600/beesknees.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="563" data-original-width="750" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhiu-VckozZMt5ujX_Ah9vxp_AuX3CIfnaCGDEm2boQEtKBz80gbNm53QDnaJInLRU9gsSK4w5UPl3oSVCkFrnHwomI8xVc_oQw1UyB62lMClSQW2wrJS0OWIHMPZDEXY2PaGx0ynsXWhU/s320/beesknees.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">I gots bees on my knees!</td></tr>
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<em><strong>Travelogue.</strong></em></h3>
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<em><span style="color: #660000;">Travelogue: A movie, book or Illustrated lecture about the places visited and experiences encountered by a traveler.</span></em></blockquote>
I take a walk, it’s hot and it was a bad decision and moments after leaving the house I already feel like crap. <em><span style="color: #660000;">“I wonder if I should post abo- no.”</span></em> I feed the fish, walk the fence line, down to the old pond.<em> <span style="color: #660000;">“Okay maybe there’s something in my drafts- no.”</span></em> I pass the wild rose, sprawling in her summer glory and half the size of a house.<em> <span style="color: #660000;">“Okay, maybe I can post ab- no.”</span></em> I almost go through the woods, but I’d rather not end up covered in ticks. Instead, it’s back up past the chicken yard to say hello to the ladies.<em> <span style="color: #660000;">“Okay just stream of consciousness just friggin po- Yeah, sure, but I haven’t really don’t that in a few years have I?”</span></em> With a shirt full of eggs, feeling like death, soaked with sweat I round back into the house. <em><span style="color: #660000;">“I haven’t really written anything in years because I feel like shit every time I post. Huh… maybe I should post about that.”</span></em><br />
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The radio silence isn’t about a lack of ideas, or topics, but a feeling like there’s simply no ‘room’ for me to exist. It’s not just one thing - it’s a lot of things - but I feel like this is the easiest to get through first.<br />
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I don’t think I’ve ever been clear enough (and possibly cannot be clear enough) about how my blog is not, and never really will be, a “<em>how to</em>” blog. I’m not interested in bullet lists, blanket statements, virtue signaling or <em>hot takes.</em> I am not a therapist, a guru, a repository for<em> ennui</em>, a cudgel with which to threaten others, or <em>obligated </em>to reveal private details. I feel like it’s fundamental to get this across: <i><strong>This is a diary, a journal and a travelogue centered on being the voice that I wish I had heard as a youngster.</strong> </i>It humbles and honors me that other people have found value in that as well.<br />
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When I capped a certain follower count running either blog became <em>unpleasant</em>. I can’t tell you how many times I sat with my finger over the “delete”/”make private” button. Whether it was people being out and out malicious, or those simply being too familiar and pushing against personal boundaries, it was not a pleasant thing. On the other hand were people who took the time to tell me how my blog had helped them in ways large and small. I didn’t delete because I did not want to let them down, but I didn’t feel like I could post, either.<br />
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That stretched on for far longer than it should, so consider this the line in the sand. This should be the last anyone has to hear about people being ... strange, but it’ll also be the last time I’m polite about it if it has to be said again.<br />
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<em><strong>That Other, Bigger, Thing: PTSD Suuuuuuuuuuuuuucks.</strong></em></h3>
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Seven years ago a tornado outbreak almost killed me and my family, devastated my property and nearly destroyed my house (that I was in the process of remodeling... so<em> basically </em>destroyed my house), and gave me PTSD. The PTSD messed up my entire life. It’s still messing up my life, and will probably be messing up my life for a while yet.<br />
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It compounded older, earlier, traumas, and generally made me into a shadow of myself. It exacerbated health problems, caused deterioration in my interpersonal relationships in a way that, honestly, is still not okay and caused workplace issues that held me back from opportunities for advancement. I couldn’t get a job outside of the house because if I heard thunder, or things that sounded like thunder, or was informed by a newsperson that there were a risk of storms … I would basically be nonfunctional and y'know... work places aren't understanding about that.<br />
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I couldn’t work on repairs and cleanup because the sight of the storm damage would exacerbate the issue, making me physically ill and mentally wonky for days at a time. Then, I lost my salaried job working from home and had to become a freelancer and simply couldn’t financially afford to do more than work myself to the bone. <em>And boy… did I ever. </em><br />
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I’ve lost almost a decade of my life to mental illness and the stigmas against it. Trying to exist my way around this has been a daily challenge that I have had to manage, essentially, alone. <br />
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<em><strong>Digging Ever Upward</strong></em></h3>
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I began to give up on trying to find my way out of the labyrinthine cave and just began digging straight up. Sure, I ended up choking on a lot of dirt along the way - but I finally started to see light. I rented the land out to a relative who not only paid me a bit for staying there, but helped immensely with cleaning up and repairing damage - I cannot stress how much that both broke my heart AND helped my brain. Eventually I could face looking at my damaged mobile home again. I got some supplies and made a dent in some general repairs, bought some shelving to start storing materials, and was (and am) making headway. Using it for a workshop will be a lot of work, but worth it. Maybe one day it’ll even be livable. I feel like moving through and past the physical aftermath finally helped me to look at the damage in the less physical stuff - the life stuff - with more clarity.<br />
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<br /><em><strong>Capitalism Stuff.</strong></em></h3>
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Due to Etsy being capricious and changing rules around I decided (after a lot of whining and complaining) to allow my shop to be deactivated, and bought some hosting with a shopping cart. I’m currently working my way through remaking listing images and dealing with paperwork to get that running. In the meantime there is a landing page, an about page, and links to my social media. In the future the shop will be added, and theoretically a couple of other pages. You can take a look at <a href="http://rootand.rocks/" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">rootand.rocks</a><br />
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A few people asked about how they could show their support for what I do/make even if they didn’t want to buy something and, well… I'm not going to turn this into an infomerical so you can read more at <a href="http://patreon.com/rootandrock">patreon.com/rootandrock</a>. The immediacy of financial return means that I can afford to do things like posting bits of work on books, or plant profiles, without feeling financially pressured. It feels like a good way forward - it's totally optional and helps out a lot.<br />
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I’ve been quietly working writing and art again. First, on a series of small book/lets, each covering a single topic. They’re heavily illustrated, and geared toward the market who likes really artsy, limited-edition, occult content. The first, a short work on using snail shells to create charms, talismans and vessels is nearly done - down to the last layout phase and dealing with printing/binding. Another about harvesting and processing clay - viewed through an alchemical lense - is getting started, and a third of poetry about woods-spirits is halfway done. The long-suffering toad book has also been pecked and poked at as well. <i><span style="color: #660000;">I know. I can almost hear the surprised gasps from here.</span></i><br />
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It’s fine, or it will be. Really. It’s getting ... more like living and less like digging upward every day. Should I have said more along the way? Maybe? I don’t know. Sometimes bearing your soul to the internet is a bad idea while you’re vulnerable. Sometimes it’s not a kind place. But to those who were and are kind, thank you. You kept me digging.<br />
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(This entry was first published July 26 on my Patreon - and moved here a month later. Dates may, therefore, be slightly askew)Scyllahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03822031765851992717noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1208084550257016582.post-44662784914260171962016-10-13T11:44:00.001-05:002016-10-13T11:48:36.092-05:00Ol' Bent and Bowed.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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This morning <span style="font-size: xx-small;">(1)</span> I had my snoot in a snip. I could list all the ten thousand things that resulted in a snipped snoot, but bottom line I was <i>perturbed</i>. <br />
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When I am in no fit state for man or beast I tend to go take a walk. Usually these walks are to think on my feet, visit the locals and be able to cuss and mutter aloud where no one can hear me. It gets shit out of my system, and lets in fresh air and land-energy to fill that void and prevent the re-entry of a bad mood for at least a while.<br />
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I took a walk out to <i>[Ol’ Bent and Bowed] </i>who is/was the embodiment/anchor point/hot spot/vessel of Something. It’s hard to describe spirits sometimes, because who or rather what they are comes at me in a rush of wordless imagery. Oak trees, oak whiskey barrels, whiskey itself, something John Barleycorn-esque. Subtle loam-layers of moonshiners and distant storms, lightning-split trees gushing out black, whiskey-scented, water from their hollow innards. Paul Bunyan Hero-myth, wreathed in leaves and deep in his drink.<br />
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I poured him a shot of decent whiskey and popped the little shot glass atop a makeshift herm/altar of dead fall, bark and acorns. As he drank up his whiskey<i><span style="font-size: xx-small;">(‘s spiritual essence)</span></i> he sat a spell and said that in his opinion all things, be they bad moods or death itself, can be undone by having a nip of the good shit. I had the good sense to stay quiet for a long moment and then said “Sounds like we both need another shot.” He laughed. I laughed. I’m sure it would’ve looked fuckin weird to anyone wandering by. <br />
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<span style="font-size: x-large;"><b>.·.</b></span></div>
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These days I increasingly work with my back yard, and de-emphasize organized or pre-packaged 'systems', simply because it's like using a map of London to get around rural Oklahoma. I’ve seen folks call this re-focus on geographically close features and spirits “locale cultus” and “mythologizing landscapes” and I’m not sure what I want to call it anymore, but I know that it is what I find works best.<br />
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Unfortunately, I see a lot of people who do the bioregional thing starting to do the <i>nationalist</i> thing and I’m not into that and would much rather not share my company, time, or words with persons of that leaning<span style="font-size: xx-small;">(2)</span>. It makes it difficult to discuss anything - when you listen you start to hear echoes that you don’t wanna hear, or even find disgusting. When your heart and soul starts being co-opted by the terminally misguided. The water gets muddy. Nothin’ good comes of it, most times. <br />
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Because of the above I don’t share my opinions much these days, nor do I share my experiences. There’s a reason you can see the count of yearly posts just fuckin’ tank on my blog. It’s a little because of the above, a lot because of bullying, and some sprinkles on top of people ignoring personal boundaries. In short: <i>It’s a burn-out</i>.<br />
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<b><span style="font-size: x-large;">·.·</span></b></div>
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So, naturally, here I am in the woods talking to a spirit who both is and is not a tree and both is and is not whiskey and both is and is not a person. We are combating the forces of entropy with a nip of <i>the good shit</i>. I ask him questions about who he is, and he parries each thrust with a joke or a quip so fuckin' perfect that I can’t even be angry. He tells me his titles and his names and that is that. He is who he is and he is who he is not. He is <i>[Ol’ Bent and Bowed]</i>, and that’s all there is to it.<br />
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My research into the names he gives and titles he offers is uselessly academic. I know that if I want to be right with him I give him whiskey and if he is right with me I am right with the world. What more would I care to know? But still I look, finding stories of devilish preachers who can talk to the dead, May-Day customs, ‘Mountain folklore’, moonshiner songs, and other things of ill repute. I find little specks of gold that come together to form … well, the same picture I already have. <br />
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“Who you tryin’ to learn me for?” he asks. Not what, or why, but <i>who</i>. And that makes sense. If I want to know him for myself I’m already there, and if I wanted to introduce someone to him the easiest way would be to simply… make the introduction. I dribble the shot glass out onto the little shrine, dust my knees off and say “Settles that, don’t it?” He laughs, I laugh. It probably looks really fucking weird. <br />
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This is what it can look like to work your land. You are the priest who writes the books, and makes the grimoires. You are the one who listens and discerns. And ultimately, where you do and don't chose to share that is going to be important. Read as much as you can, yes, absolutely - and then grow your own questions and experiments from that. Never, ever, let it be inviolate, untouchable, and set in stone. Never, ever, shy away from learning more.<br />
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Look to the spirits themselves and ask the questions that matter to you. You can create a spirit guide, grimoire, or D&D style bestiary that captures a photo of your sphere of influence (or sphere that you are influenced by)... but just beyond that edge it’s going to start to lose meaning. Your Codex Cincinati will probably fall flat in the Everglades. That’s a good thing, though, right?<br />
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After all… <i>who you tryin’ to learn them for?</i><br />
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<i><span style="color: #660000;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">(1)</span><span style="font-size: x-small;"> This is Coffee Blog 101. Every morning I take the time to enjoy some coffee, and often have as close as I get to real meditation. Coffee blogs come from those quiet morning moments and collect enough other thoughts to form a post. The day described happened on 7/2/16. The pictures are not from that day.</span></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="color: #660000;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">(2) </span><span style="font-size: x-small;">I hate virtue signaling so consider this my first, last, and only effort to signal my stance against racism, sexism, facism, etc. Just read my tumblr, I'm a big, queer, doom hippy. </span></span></i></div>
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Scyllahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03822031765851992717noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1208084550257016582.post-71723521725480478162016-03-27T12:00:00.003-05:002016-03-27T12:00:55.080-05:00Plant Profile: Soapberry<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/9/92/Western_Soapberry.jpg/564px-Western_Soapberry.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/9/92/Western_Soapberry.jpg/564px-Western_Soapberry.jpg" height="320" width="300" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Courtesy of Wikipedia.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">NOTE: This entry is not even slightly historical, and my own research/intuition. I'm one of the only people I know of that keeps this plant around, and the only one I know of who uses it in woo (thus far). </span><span style="font-size: x-small;"> </span><span style="font-size: x-small;">So, please attribute accordingly, and try not to be a bad neighbor. This post is also an ooooooold draft, which I am now posting to ensure this blog doesn't go dormant again. </span><br />
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Sometimes a plant catches my eye. Usually while I'm driving somewhere, or taking a walk. I've known for years that the berries of this tree were used as a soap substitute by the Mormon wagon trains, but never really knew anything else. Curiosity finally won out.<br />
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It's not a big tree, but they are lovely. The bark is thick and craggy, the berries look like little burning suns when the light hits them. But what use could they have (aside from the obvious) for this witch? How do I dig deeper and discover the uses of this plant?<br />
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<br />1: The Physical Appearance of The Plant.</div>
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Soapberries (<i>Sapindus drummondii</i>) isn't terribly tall, I'd say the tree wasn't more than twenty feet, and I know for a fact it's at least twenty years old. The last Tornado we had didn't even break a branch. It's related to the Lychee, though I wouldn't eat one as the berries are listed as "mildly toxic" due to the saponin content. Better safe than sorry.<br />
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The bark is deep, craggy, and flaking. The wood becomes brittle toward the fruit end. The fruit themselves are bright, shining, yellow-orange, and remain on the tree through winter and well into the next spring. The flowers which produce the fruit are small and off-white, present only on the female trees. It spreads primarily by Rhizomes. <br />
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<span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">2: The Properties of It's Relations. </span></div>
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Soapberry has been used not only for soap, but as contraceptives, emetics, anti-spasmodics, and is apparently being looked at for anti-migraine properties.<br />
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It's relations, the Lychee, Longan and Rambutan (rambutans are also used in soap-making) are thought to have "warming" qualities in Chinese Traditional Medicine, and another relation Guarana - well... it has twice the caffeine of coffee. Buckeyes and Horse Chestnuts, used in hoodoo as a "pocket piece" for sexual prowess and financial gain, are also related to the Soapberry.<br />
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<span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">3: Talking to The Deva.</span></div>
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She, the tree from which my berries came, is quiet right now. She's cold, and why the hell am I bothering her at this hour? I explain who and what I am, why I am interested. She sighs deeply, stretches her bones, and explains.<br />
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"I am for cleaning, and changing, and washing away. I strip away nastiness without harming what's left. I can exorcise, and wash your laundry. But like too much of anything, I can do harm. My rootbark can kill, and my berries can make men sick when they're stupid. But I don't think you're stupid."<br />
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And off she drifts, swaying in the cold wind, berries clustered all over the tips of her branches.<br />
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<span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">4: Assembling it All.</span><br />
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What this tells me is that, though this plant is a "fruit", it is not "fruitful". It's primary qualities are "getting rid of" rather than "drawing in". It's poisonous, persistent and slow, deep, dry, and craggy. It spreads and grows, and cares not for storms. It's sunny fruit, good for sloughing away unwanted grime, are gentle - but deadly if abused. It cautions us on excess. It is warming, and cleansing, and powerful woo for banishing. It is Airy, and Sunny and a little bit Saturnine. Maybe better described as "Cold and Dry with invasive qualities"<br />
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In short, right up my alley. </div>
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Scyllahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03822031765851992717noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1208084550257016582.post-49115123319495685312016-03-20T12:22:00.000-05:002017-07-28T13:39:34.664-05:00Bonework And The Wrathful.<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXqysHkPDH2yvKAmU5jbmg8ipmOSVxgcw31JnfyjeNW6eRXyk1R8mLo0j8rbB07ViMuHO3CsRNfQt3BU4AX4sSZvWJadhU3_vhMrrBMOdPkByPDdwWrLUmhXIanoQy2fjkNLNnE2AIv1s/s1600/toadalt_blog.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXqysHkPDH2yvKAmU5jbmg8ipmOSVxgcw31JnfyjeNW6eRXyk1R8mLo0j8rbB07ViMuHO3CsRNfQt3BU4AX4sSZvWJadhU3_vhMrrBMOdPkByPDdwWrLUmhXIanoQy2fjkNLNnE2AIv1s/s320/toadalt_blog.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Various Familiar vessels and Figurines by Scylla. "Ladyfrog" figure by Erin Nightwalker.</td></tr>
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This entry has been languishing in my "Drafts" for a long time now. A long, long, time. Re-reading this entry in repeated attempts to finish it I broke down crying quite often. I would shelve it for a few weeks, then a few months, and now... ah... it's been a while. Because it involves stories of spirits who deeply impacted me, and who set the tone for the way I deal with the Animal Dead as well as the Human Dead.<br />
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This is also about animals in general, and expands on <a href="http://rootandrock.blogspot.com/2014/07/hard-to-talk-about-stuff-pt1-permissions.html">HTTAS: Permissions</a> - About the need for a working relationship and consent when engaging with others in that relationship.<br />
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TW: Animal Death, descriptions thereof. Bone work, bloody bits, witchcraft, emotions. <br />
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This post is a letter of love and fondness to Wrathful (especially), and to all of the spirits I have known. It has been my privilege to serve as their psychopomp and friend.<br />
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This is not a how-to post, this is another example of why I tell people that my blog is a travelogue and journal rather than an instructional guide.<br />
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<i style="font-size: x-large;"><b>Perspective.</b></i></div>
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<i><span style="color: #660000;">I'm sitting on the back of a Sleeping Giant - zie's been restless lately, quaking, shaking, and grumbling away. On my right hand is The Untamed Wood, cut through by The River into the realms of life and death. On my left hand is The Giant's Bowl, filled and empty in turns, so long-neglected that wildlife has come to dwell there. Here, horsenettle has grown in the folds of the Giant's clothes, through the deep kudzu blanket it had pulled over itself before nodding off. Bitter amaranths and redbud trees conceal me from onlookers - you'd have to really have a sharp eye to see the witch in black, with their multi-colored shawl, amongst the brown stalks.<br /> <br /><br /> This world would move without me. [...] I am better for having known it, and so I strive to make it better for having known me.<br /><br /><a href="http://rootandrock.blogspot.com/2014/07/hard-to-talk-about-stuff-pt1-permissions.html"> - "Hard to Talk About Pt.1"</a></span></i></blockquote>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><i><b>Necromancy</b></i></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><i><b><br /></b></i></span></div>
<br />
I do not like the word "Necromancy" because to me it is a loaded word. I know this statement is going to annoy a few people, so I'm just going to be forthright and say "You're free to disagree". Necromancy means "Divination with the Dead"- the majority of those working with the dead do little in the way of divination. For what Necromancy actually is, I strongly suggest <a href="http://vonfaustus.blogspot.com/">Jack Faust's</a> posts about Necromancy rituals from classical grimoires involving literal divination and the raising of shades.<br />
<br />
Now, according to the selfsame Mr. Faust the nature of that divination can be very different things - a term used loosely at it's roots, even then. I accept that, and that is certainly a way to extract myself from my dislike of the term, and especially for the usual tech associated with that term (binding, conjuring forcibly, constraining, blasting-blessings etc.)<br />
<br />
A lot of people have taken to using Necrolatrist, which is the worship or veneration of the dead. Another term slowly coming back into use is Goes, which is derived from a practice of lamentations for the dead which later evolved into spurring people and spirits into action based on the lamentations. <br />
<br />
These terms, especially the later, resonate very strongly with what I get up to. I am a carrion-eater, embalmer, and mourner of the dead.<br />
<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><b><i>The First Bones - "Bird" </i></b></span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;"><i>“It is disgraceful that they should lie there and rot.” He says, and right now HE is Anubis - not a masked priest, but a half-jackal chimera who is a God older than the dirt under my feet. "Honor it." He says "Peel it apart and lay power in it's bones. Then it will live forever." -<a href="http://rootandrock.blogspot.com/2011/05/vessels-and-their-contents.html"> The Vessels and Their Contents</a></i></span></blockquote>
<br />
"Bird" still gets me where it counts. I can tell you that it has been a very long count of years since I first found it, and a long count since we said goodbye to one another. I remember with more clarity than I'd like the image of its wing flagging in the wind, half of its body rendered a stain. "It is disgraceful that<i><b> they </b></i>should lie there and rot." - Funny, that it's taken me years to notice the plural in that statement. It was never just about Bird. It was about every one of them.<br />
<br />
The first body I pulled to my chest, the first one I cleaned and dressed. The first I mummified, resurrected, and spoke to. Not only did he teach me bird "magic", not only did he teach me the process of fostering a spirit into another existence, but he taught me about being responsible with my woo.<br />
<br />
If I am to serve my land as it serves me I must first, foremost and always, realize that the spirits and animals are individuals with full agency. Always. That never again am I to work first and ask permission later. That what I did with Bird was okay, because I didn't know better - but now that I do I cannot trespass into the area willy-nilly. That it's just not polite. And that no, not even a deity giving me permission is okay. The spirit itself must ask and consent.<br />
<br />
After him, and a few others that swiftly followed, I forced myself not to engage with that work. I didn't engage with those gods, either. I'd bring home the occasional body and bury it, but I didn't think about it. I wouldn't think about it. Because the harder I looked the other way the less gut-wrenching it was. Because I was not prepared for the responsibility of... vivifying the dead, re-awakening the unconscious and giving voice to spirits who before did not know speech. I was unprepared, and rightfully so, to play at Lordship. I kept all of it at arm's length until I was in my twenties.<br />
<br />
<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyNyBbReOKU_4CXpCZbouU755Tp1LWPSYHfPOqYmiCw4AcXRHov4UXG6ud8OQobavvCN64H7Y1EXNKZio2bVhvx1tn9y8ROSWAj3STmlQcDn5l482zpYzMXWQI41Dm1V0DopbyvO-oYbU/s1600/bonewarden.jpe" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyNyBbReOKU_4CXpCZbouU755Tp1LWPSYHfPOqYmiCw4AcXRHov4UXG6ud8OQobavvCN64H7Y1EXNKZio2bVhvx1tn9y8ROSWAj3STmlQcDn5l482zpYzMXWQI41Dm1V0DopbyvO-oYbU/s1600/bonewarden.jpe" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Duoune, Bi-cephalic, Confusing Pronouns. Bonewarden.</td></tr>
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<div style="text-align: center;">
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<div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><b><i>The Bonewarden.</i></b></span></div>
<br />
Some bodies and bones are just, plain, empty. The spirit that was once there is gone, and there's no getting it back. I feel a fond sadness for the dead bones, but I can't call it mourning - I'll never know those spirits, so it's a bit precious of me to mourn them. I clean with love and care, but it is not personal. No tears, no heartache. Thank goodness. But some bones, with or without life's spark, have spirit. And that is how I met the Bonewarden.<br />
<br />
I had been sitting on the Giant's Back one day, and the shuffling to get my posterior comfortable had my scuffed away the dead plant life down to dirt. I saw the faintest glimmer of white at the edge of the soil.<br />
<br />
A little shoving, a little effort and soon my shirt was filled with bones. It felt like a living thing in my hands. It felt like I was engaging in the meticulous task of gathering up the dismembered body of an aware, alive, thing (vocally pointing out to me that I had missed a toe bone, or a claw, or...). Clean, dry, white bones that still spoke to me. It, the spirit therein, asked me about myself - I explained who I was, and that I was a Witch. It said simply, neatly, "I will watch their bones for you."<br />
<br />
I felt my gut drop. I knew what it was referencing, the thing I didn't like to talk or think about. Home it came, ceaselessly and tirelessly doing its work. Slow, patient, wise and watchful, the warden of bones.<br />
<br />
When I do the work in the boneyard, and when I have spirits around who need a hand that is NOT a human hand, it is Bonewarden who tends them. It is Bonewarden's tough shell and thick bones that are immune to the bites and scratches of the wild and restless. It is Bonewarden's duo-cephalic voice that accompanies me when I sing the laments for the dead.<br />
<br />
<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHewtO0QnBWDKOk4o6Fy3M6zj4yRhZeaamFxA4076utgmqUOYYb3poKKbcvq4fAAQ-On9UmWuzC1V2xOn5vMvEuMX6OHFZByZ0j2PUTzpWg_ax5yjecFaFYgvqLBgJBYkSff73lSkbzdU/s1600/blasted.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHewtO0QnBWDKOk4o6Fy3M6zj4yRhZeaamFxA4076utgmqUOYYb3poKKbcvq4fAAQ-On9UmWuzC1V2xOn5vMvEuMX6OHFZByZ0j2PUTzpWg_ax5yjecFaFYgvqLBgJBYkSff73lSkbzdU/s320/blasted.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Blasted Earth. Over five feet in diameter and shrinking glacially. </td></tr>
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><b><i>(Expletives Deleted)</i></b></span></div>
<br />
<br />
Some time ago, a witch tried to sell me a skull. She promised that it was truly perfect for a Familiar. That it was ethically sourced (a wilderness find) and as a fox was very vocal in asking about its new "keeper".<br />
<br />
When I saw the skull for the first time, my heart sank. It was badly damaged - clearly by a bullet. Some of the teeth were broken, some missing - the cleaning had been botched. It ached with a sad energy, and my stomach tightened. In my mind's eye I saw a hissing, spitting, caged creature. And the creature I saw was a Raccoon. I asked why she was selling me a trapped, tortured, raccoon as a friendly nature-found fox. She told me she didn't want it around anymore.<br />
<br />
I brought it to the boneyard, and I buried it. I left it the hell alone. It will never want people around it. She did something to it that's held it there in that shattered head, angry and violent. It is my belief that in her attempt to make a familiar out of it, she really, really, messed up. She killed, empowered and THEN tried to enslave something, and needless to say it backfired horribly.<br />
<br />
I cannot leave it food - food left on it's grave will not rot (it dries out, mummifies, turns to dust), nothing will touch it. The patch of earth in that spot is blasted, and bare. Nothing grows on it. I can't get close or it will lash out. Bonewarden tends to it, and keeps it as calm as it can be kept. I don't know how long the vigil will go, but I trust that one day there will be enough of the heat dissipated that I can try and divorce it from its remains and give it peace. It has been several years, and only now does it feel like it can close its eyes for a moment, still coiled tightly, still ready to attack… but exhausted enough to sleep a little.<span style="font-size: large;"><b><i><br /></i></b></span></div>
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><b><i>Ladyfrog. </i></b></span></div>
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i><span style="color: #660000;">"NO! Oh, NO! Oh HELL NO. I didn't set out to do the Toadbone rite, you fuckin bones!" I shouted. "This doesn't mean ANYTHING!" - <a href="http://rootandrock.blogspot.com/2011/11/how-i-accidentally-became-toadwitch.html">How I Accidentally Became A Toadwitch.</a></span></i></blockquote>
<br />
For all the lesson had been burned in that I wasn't to go about messing with shit without permission, that did not mean that shit could not mess with me as it liked and while my feelings may have changed about the exact and specific nature of what went on (a post for another time), <i>everything changed.</i><br />
<br />
Intent is only so much of the equation here. Thinking, feeling, ensouled beings with agency can act like any other being of the same nature does. And while I do not feel accosted or assaulted by what happened it wasn't a good time. Some amount of hubris played into it, thinking that there would not be an initiatory sickness with an initiatory rite. There was. Part of it was the hubris of assuming that because I try to be a nice and gentle person that nonhuman persons would be the same. They aren't. That lesson done finally stuck.<br />
<br />
I got sick. I got sick like I haven't ever been sick before or since. Like someone gave a flu the smarts and willpower to be mean. I was feeling the frog's death, I think. I know that might sound weird (of course in context if this part is the weird-sounding one you may be on the wrong blog).<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i><span style="color: #660000;">"She drowned, I drowned. She froze, I froze. She baked, I baked. She was washed clean, and so was I. "</span></i></blockquote>
The change in trajectory of the Work after this was marked. What had been a deeply private thing that I only occasionally spoke about became inflamed with a real passion to speak outwardly. To openly reclaim the familiar, and to encourage others to do the same.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><b><i>The Wrathful.</i></b></span></div>
<br />
The scene isn't pretty. There is a lot of blood. It wasn't struck, it was shot through the body-mass and through the face. This was an act of malice, rather than accident. When I pick it up I feel that malice come at me, snarling and furious. I bring it home where it will not be ground to paste on the highway. A sad sight, I'm sure. A grown person clutching a dead mammal to their chest, the carcass wrapped in a handful of plastic bags.<br />
<br />
I dig its grave, and the Funeral begins. The Bonewarden and I speak orations, fan fumes, and weep. As I unwrap it, I feel the bones in it's face shift and grind - obliterated - and I sob so hard I throw up (this was the first time it happened, sob-until-puke. But now its a staple). Every now and then I visit the plants that grow in The Boneyard, or the other spirits-in-the-bones. I visit the Bonewarden, who seems quite happy to do the promised job. And as I conclude my visits, I turn toward the little obliterated mammal’s grave and leave a food item and a dish of water. And without fail, each day, it hisses, spits, and claws. It’s still in those bones, stuck and angry, and I know what that can mean.<br />
<br />
After weeks it’s reaction to my presence levels out and becomes neutral. It knows I don't ask anything of it - I don't come to bargain, harass it or poke it spiritually. I do not testify over it like a preacher trying to drive the devil from it. I don't even look it in the ‘eye’. I leave it offerings, because that is the least that I can do. It is not an object, or a slave. It is a creature that I really want to find true healing, rather than a brick wall of peace-and-pass-on. And so this time, when I extend the hand with the offering I do not set it down. I hold out the offering as an olive branch.<br />
<br />
If I have done right by it, and by my vows, it has learned all it needs to know through my actions. Not words. Not coercion. Not blessings. Not cleansing. Not witchery. Not banishment. Another human has not done something to it, but something for it, with no caveats or requirements. The Boneyard accepts all and would care for them until no one is left to care - and even then my spirit will tend until the bones cool. <br />
<br />
Now, each day, it waits. He comes to my hand, and I feed him. I introduce him to touch of the spirit variety. I introduce him to the other spirits. I introduce him to voice. From time to time on my walks I’ll sense his presence around me, restless. He sees me kneel before the Cactus under the Gall-Oak, and dab at its flowers with pollen from another of the same species a short hike away. Something changes, because for the first time he communicates. Wordless, full of feeling and images, is a why. A flurry of things being asked all at once; I cannot "hear" them, but I can feel them in the connection. Why am I nice? Why weren't his killers? Why am I doing the things I do? Nearly every spirit eventually asks.<br />
<br />
"Because nearly everyone in this world is small, wounded and afraid. Some are at peace with that and some aren’t. It’s the ones who aren’t at peace that spread it like a disease."</div>
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><i><b><br /></b></i></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><i><b>Oh, so you work with animals. </b></i></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i><b>Their pay checks must be enormous.</b></i></div>
<br />
After our first meaningful communication it seems to flow freely. But he often ‘speaks’ of anger, confusion and wrath. Here is where I use words, here is where I console in a human way. Before I can stop myself I utter a Name - "Wrathful"*. It sticks like a cockleburr and from there on it is his. It's another month or more before I visit the Boneyard for Work. It is a domestic animal that has been struck near a road. I can tell that the vehicle left the road specifically to strike it. It was no accident, and was probably the same person as the one who shot my little friend. I am hugging this poor, dead, thing that humanity made, and doing my best to give it the dignity it deserves. I am enraged at the utter betrayal and utter evil of killing a domestic animal for sport. The spirit is gone, but some things (goddamnit) must be done right. <br />
<br />
When the grave is dug, Wrathful is communicating the way animals do. I feel it in my spine, vibrating like loud music at a concert. For a fleeting moment I think that I’ve made a mistake. I try not to tame or domesticate, only calm the angry because we humans are contagious and spiritually teratogenic. When we Name something and hand-tame it we change and infect it. We change it’s intelligence and vocabulary. <br />
<br />
There is a tense time that follows. His behavior is different. When I come to tend the fresh grave I find him ‘on’ it. When I leave him offerings he rejects them. When the soil finally sinks and begins to sod over is when it happens. He returns to his own grave and his vocabulary changes from hindbrain images and emotions to words. “Dig me up and take me inside.”<br />
<br />
So I do. The confetti of his shattered skull gathered into a paper box and what comes out the other side only vaguely resembled a skull - held together with resin, wax, and air-dry clay. I resurrect his bones and try to fortify them. I give him iron knives, and bitter poisons. I oil him, so that he is as slippery. I gift him with all-seeing eyes of glass that never tire, nor blink. I feed him richly. I bleed my tongue for him so that humans may hear his speech. He has crossed from "A spirit known to me and in my care" into "A Familiar Spirit." But he will never, never, "belong" to me or anyone else. He belongs to himself, and he is cared for because he is loved. His wrath avenges those killed wrongly. His brazen claws slash tires and cause blowouts. He leads the parade of the broken-bodied into the Untamed Woods, a ghostly procession of the crossing-over. <br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnCCahlvJRzAa_zUlLiB4NHe468hsb8Ap8qG84cbsFq0kehyfNICMbSZA63AT8-inl3RBxwLL2bLNQITA5hYLrViBuYvIqU5ZaVchIAWqQgS_x1UWx8dNkg7PPsmrLZlb-n8L0HYQhvJU/s1600/wholeagain.jpe" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnCCahlvJRzAa_zUlLiB4NHe468hsb8Ap8qG84cbsFq0kehyfNICMbSZA63AT8-inl3RBxwLL2bLNQITA5hYLrViBuYvIqU5ZaVchIAWqQgS_x1UWx8dNkg7PPsmrLZlb-n8L0HYQhvJU/s1600/wholeagain.jpe" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Whole again. Whole again. Lickity Split.</td></tr>
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><b><i>Whole Again.</i></b></span></div>
<br />
<br />
For some spirits I am a patron. I support what they are doing in the world because I like what they’re up to. I give what I can to make that happen. Whenever I asked Wrathful what he’d like the answer was always the same: A skull that was not shattered, shot, or struck. I’d never been able to find one that fit those criteria. Lots of trapped animals, lots of “nature find” roadkill - all inappropriate for him. On 4/27/14 I had the urge to go to the first occult store I ever set foot in - a sudden onslaught of "need" that lead me thirty-odd miles through rush hour, airforce base, traffic to get there in time. In a counter near the back was a skull of the correct species, and just about the same size as his original. It was clearly weathered by nature and stained by red clay. A few teeth were missing but otherwise it was whole. I verified with the store clerk that it was found in someone’s yard, and therefore unlikely to have been mistreated. <br />
<br />
He said to me, gently and quietly "I can be whole again. I would like that." </div>
<div>
<br />
The original was soaked until the clay dissolved, the wax peeled away, glass eyes broken with one sharp blow. His new skull has been quiet. A light, peaceful whisper of his presence comes and goes. I miss him sometimes, but have never felt the need to disturb his well-deserved rest. The skull sits unadorned, unladen, unburdened. <br />
<br />
He is no longer Wrathful now.</div>
Scyllahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03822031765851992717noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1208084550257016582.post-77718141592840913342014-10-18T20:06:00.000-05:002014-10-18T20:06:52.367-05:00My Grandmother's Words. <table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixUgc3_Ph5tjxfhGBa7zQF-0fBqDd_y2tX0cKIkqB_n8kFrc2SCeXNpZiel_LQ2CqVtnAFD86y0f7BNCKcBvh5zo2-X3DmlIA2sGl8NstplCXUv4Gqg-PnA4yuYkF-XriRIw82eqGxD4g/s1600/nan.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixUgc3_Ph5tjxfhGBa7zQF-0fBqDd_y2tX0cKIkqB_n8kFrc2SCeXNpZiel_LQ2CqVtnAFD86y0f7BNCKcBvh5zo2-X3DmlIA2sGl8NstplCXUv4Gqg-PnA4yuYkF-XriRIw82eqGxD4g/s1600/nan.jpg" height="300" width="400" /></a></span></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">My Grandmother's souvenir set containing oil, incense, soil and holy water from Jerusalem</span></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">.</span></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">If you suffer from an anxiety disorder, depression, etc. This entry may be triggering for you. It may also be cathartic. If you were bullied growing up, came from a hostile or toxic home life...etc. The same thing may be true. I want to "trigger warn" anyone coming by because I really, really, don't want you to hurt over my hurt. I want to you be free of your fears and suffering. I want you to be happy. I want to be happy. I want to live by my Grandmother's words or rather the meaning behind them. </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">This is not, on the surface, a woo-woo post. This is also not an attempt to declare a change in my religion. This is me cleaning out an old wound, and making some thinly-veiled commentary on bullying. </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">My Saturn Return started when I was in my early twenties. It loomed on the horizon like something out of Lovecraft (accompanied by blasting trumpets and screeching metal) and impressed upon me that it was about to mess me up so profoundly that by the time it was over I wouldn't even recognize myself. I took to heart its message and made grand, drastic, changes in my life to sweep a path for it to pass without injury. Except that an entire decade of the stuff means you can't keep everything out of harm's way and focusing on trying to save it all means you often save only the most precious things, or realize their loss in the aftermath. </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Un/fortunately, among this was nascent work to do spiritual and mental healing. It was taking apart things that I'd carried around and discarding the nonfunctional or toxic pieces. It involved work like "soul retrieval" (god how I hate that word). It took me a few years to get back to it, and to have the breakthroughs that I wish I'd had then (or, better yet, in my teens). Among the realizations was that I have the full permission of myself to be myself and not to temper who I am for others - which is a big deal considering that like most people who were born with their generative organs on the inside I was raised to meet a certain set of criteria, among which was a certain amount of "be seen and not heard." and "you are communal property." And Saturnus was right - in the end, I am a very different me. </span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">I always look back on related experiences when I write a post, because I like to establish the same pattern for the reader that I have experienced. I like to show you all why I came to the conclusion I came to, and what the weight of it means. This is in no way an attempt to sway anyone to my belief system, but rather... food for thought about your own and after all something meaty and decent to spend your time reading.</span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">In my teens I was a master of ignoring people.</span></span></span></h4>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">I lived in a hostile home environment at the time and had developed an almost supernatural ability to be cognizant of my surroundings but have zero reaction to them unless I had to. It was a defense mechanism to shield myself against an unending onslaught from within and without, and the constant brace for metaphorical blows is something I carry to this day.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">So, there I am at the ripe age of something-teen standing in the "new age" section of my local bookstore. I am looking at </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The Necronomicon Spellbook</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> when someone behind me makes a discourteous sound and tries to get my attention. In this store the New Age/Witchy section and Christian section are for some reason piled on top of one-another. My fortunes did not smile that day. At the sound my senses explode in that way anxious people will understand. I became hyper-aware. My heart rate had already gone from resting to Insane (tachycardia plagued me in my teens), and was so loud in my ears I thought everyone must have been able to hear it.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">You are engrossed in your reading material, and do not notice the person making sounds at you and slowly, surely, invading your personal space. You have every right to be here. Oh god they're getting closer. I'm not doing anything wrong please just leave me alone. Go away. I just want to read my book. I don't want to fight. I am so tired please don't make me fight. I don't want to because no matter what I say I'll be wrong. Please. I come here so I don't have to deal with this. Please don't berate me. I just want to be left alone. Can't you people just leave me alone? Please just go away-</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>"You're going to hell."</i><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">she says. The world collapses around my ears into a cold, steely, shaking, nightmare. She says it like she's reading it off of a guest list. She says it like it's a vow. She says it like it's a solicitation. She says it like she's asking me to throw a punch. I stare fixedly ahead at the little book. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /><i>"Didn't you hear me? You're gonna go to hell."</i><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> No negotiation then. There is no offer of help. I'm stepping off a cliff and I deserve it. She's not pointing out my mistake, she's celebrating it. She's spitting off the edge to see which hits first. This is an inevitability. I've earned this. I deserve this. This is my reminder that I don't belong. I don't get to be a person. </span></span></span><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">She gets closer. Closer. She's now only a couple of feet away. I can smell her perfume and shampoo.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span></span><i>"You had better listen when I speak to you." </i><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">She bristles, she's angry. I ignore her. I hear every single word, I see every single gesture and bit of body language. She is screaming retribution for this perceived slight of my </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">existence</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">. I do not react. I slowly turn the page, my hands are shaking. I am not reading.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> I am pretending.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> I am playing the part of a deaf mute. I am playing the part of a sentient statue. I am a ghost. I am not here. Not in this place, with this woman, saying these things. </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">I hear my Grandmother's words in my heart. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">It is the devil who sews enmity between brother and sister. It is the devil who makes us hate each-other. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">These words this woman is spitting at me are poison. There is nothing in her words but her own pride. There is no hero this day. I have no clever words, not even those beautiful ones. I keep my head down, I stare fixedly ahead. She continues to berate me about my trip to hell until she grows bored at my lack of response and leaves. I put the book back on the shelf, I stare fixedly ahead, I walk into the women's bathroom, I shut myself in a stall. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">I cry.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">It is not the first time, It won't be the last time. </span></span></span></h4>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">It's years later. I'm in a different store with a similar topic-location problem. I'm hunched over trying to balance my green tea with a blue, mammoth format, book on paganism. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">You know the one.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> It's precariously near Halloween, and I'm doing something that day or night because I'm in a festive seasonal getup with a tiny pair of horns glued to my forehead. The world's cheapest costume. I feel someone hovering a few feet behind me and to my left.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">While time and age have worn a few of the corners off of my habit of locking up like a wild rabbit in the face of conflict, it's still there. I go hyper-aware, I whale-eye, I ignore. But I can feel the intent. The internal monologue is smaller. The tone is anger rather than sheer panic, though my heart is hammering in my chest: </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Oh fuck me. Not this shit again. I have every fucking right to be in this store. Seriously? Goddamn. This fuckin' asshole is gonna bother me and I just want to be left the fuck alone to get on with my fucking day and drink my fucking tea. Can I not be bothered? Can one fucking day go by-</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>"You're going to hell." </i><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">She says. A different She in theory, but in practice I tend to feel they're all the same She. It's all the same tone, the same intent, the same meaning. It is the same prideful malice burning my ears. It is hate and spite and nastiness for it's own sake. It is self-congratulatory assholeism.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><i>"You are interfering with my shopping experience, leaving a negative impression of this place and this company and therefore costing this store money. You can either leave or I can get management."</i> I respond. It is a rote, bottomed-out, routine. It is a script I wrote in my head every day since that first harassment, re-wrote, fine tuned. Rehearsed and tried out. It is without flaw. I don't even turn around to deliver it.</span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><i>"Didn't you hear me? You're gonna go to hell."</i> No impact. This is how it's going to go. I am Bill Murray, this is groundhog day. No matter what I do we are destined to play out this absurd fucking tango until one of us drops or I run headlong into the wall, knock myself unconscious, and start the fucking loop over again.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><i>"I heard you just fine. I am not interested in discussing your personal theology. See yourself somewhere else." </i>I turn the page, I have not turned to look at her. I am shaking, but I'm exhausted with the game of being small. I am exhausted by getting tinier to make others feel larger and unthreatened. I puff up. I threat posture. I wave my arms at the bear to make it think I'm menacing. I dump a milkshake over my head to look nutty.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><i>"I'm going to get the manager!" </i>She says. I am elated. The manager knows me. Every customer nearby has seen me standing here for the last half hour quietly reading. When the manager arrives I state that I was minding my own business when this woman started cursing at me ("hell" is a curse word, after all). A nearby patron backs me up. The woman is asked to leave. Another takes her place, this one focused on why I had to ruin someone's day like that. I repeat my first response. I smile to myself as they walk away. I hear my Grandmother's words in my heart, but I don't say them.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">But, It's Never Quite So Easy. </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">I am in my Mid-to-Late 20's. I am standing hunched over a book in the "New Age" section, looking up a reference from some mass market paperback or other on the occult and I hear the sound that has chilled my spine for the billionth time in my life. The sound of someone preparing to get righteously Christian on my heathen ass while I'm minding my own fucking business. I prepare myself. I am a stone in the ocean, the waves may beat upon my back but I will break them. I am entitled to the space I occupy and entitled to go unmolested within it. Blah blah blah. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Brace for the blows. </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><i>"You're going to hell." </i>Why is it never a plea? Why is it always a victorious cry? Why is it always pride layered with self-hatred used to mask their inadequacies as a person? Why must they make others small to feel larger when each of us is made in the image of God and of the dust of dead stars? I ignore. I ignore it not because I am afraid (except I am afraid - my blood has run cold, my heart rate has skyrocketed as it always does and everything has that air of surreality), but because I don't fucking care anymore. I just don't care. This is so old, this is so tired. This is so stupid. This is a thing I could have done once or twice, but dozens of times? Really? No thank you. </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><i>"Didn't you hear me?"</i> She asks. This is gonna go the way it always does. She's not going to be satisfied until she's messed up my day. She is doing to me what she would do to a Barista who forgot the extra foam on her Late. I am tired of this shit. I am just done. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">We ain't gonna dance this dance, 'cause you ain't a fuckin' daisy. </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">I put my book down. I turn around. "I hear you trying to speak God's words, but it is the Satan's voice you speak them in. It is the Satan himself who spreads enmity between brother and sister. I won't hear those words. You think you are holy but he has you. He has you so deep you cannot see God's light from the hole you're in. I rebuke you Satan. I rebuke you in God's name. I won't hear you anymore." It erupts from me. It is righteous, and angry, and as tired as I am. It is filled with bitter disappointment and yet also with love. It is not me speaking, it is my Grandmother's voice and my Grandmother's words.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The woman looks positively wounded. Her expression goes from prideful triumph to Hollywood-Headshot confusion. Something in her eyes changes. Something in her body shifts. "I... I'm sorry." She says, and it is finally her voice I hear. She turns around, and leaves. I am as shocked as she is.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">From then on every time it happened... those were the words. My Grandmother's words. Spoken from the same place within me as she had in that moment where she cut through and spoke to defend me. Righteous anger, but also love. <span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">I don't tolerate bullies. </span></span></span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">I won't hear those words. I won't hear them anymore.</span></span></span></span> </span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span>Scyllahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03822031765851992717noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1208084550257016582.post-60813064178963481732014-09-09T15:10:00.000-05:002014-09-09T15:10:24.601-05:00Dangerous Knowledge. Pt.2<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://33.media.tumblr.com/38ba140709c7e209a442c5608a2d6a04/tumblr_nao913vsqw1qirc1to1_500.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://33.media.tumblr.com/38ba140709c7e209a442c5608a2d6a04/tumblr_nao913vsqw1qirc1to1_500.jpg" height="300" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Hamsa from one of my personal workbooks.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
A long time ago I made a post about the situation I found myself in as a youngin, and the horrors I went through as a result. Now, as an adult, I've been going through massive amounts of soul-retreival-type work and discovering... well... the whole woo-woo thing didn't start there, that's just where my memory of it picked up. So, in that respect it's basically just "pretty lucky" that it took until then to get weird/dangerous.<br />
<br />
Recently I've had several people mention the "<a href="http://rootandrock.blogspot.com/2011/11/dangerous-knowledge.html">Dangerous Knowledge"</a> post to me, either in passing or in direct reference. When that many mentions happen you need to pay attention, and I've found that it's definitely time to revisit the topic. <br />
<br />
And here's precisely how I dealt with it, though your own needs may vary.<br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a><span style="font-size: large;"><b><i></i></b></span><br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><b><i><span style="font-size: small;">Uncrossing.</span> </i></b></span></div>
<br />
When you're under attack is the time to rely on things which have the power ("off the shelf") to do it for you. <br />
<br />
My firm belief and experience is that herbs, oils, minerals...etc. are good right as nature makes them. They bring the power to the table and do not need any help. They are the first line of defense, IMO. Witch-grown herbs, awakened herbs, etc. Might pack more of a punch, but they might not. Appealing to the spirit of the plant for aid is really the key in that - it is not just botanical material, it is connected to a live current of raw power. <br />
<br />
Take regular cleansing baths, and strong ones at that. Combining herbs of similar attributes in odd numbers (personally I go with nine or higher for Serious Stuff) seems to boost the potency, like adding layers of armor on. Taking some internally (rosemary, garlic, maybe a hot pepper or two with dinner) helps push that outward. I don't advocate drinking holy water, because I know people who have gotten intestinal problems from that, but taking communion if you're of the faith won't hurt.<br />
<br />
The first step I suggest, in short, is a thorough campaign of uncrossing work. <a href="http://thiscrookedcrown.com/2014/08/21/uncrossing-oneself/">Over at This Crooked Crown's blog there is a great post on uncrossing work.</a> <br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i><b>Make your environment inhospitable. </b></i></div>
<br />
Burn incense designed to banish, ward, shield, cleanse, comfort..etc. Hang up icons and symbols designed to avert, impede...etc. Play gospel music, or recite chants designed to drive out bad spirits. Ring bells, have chimes. Got some black salt? NO? Make it or buy it. Sprinkle it around - especially across doorways and windows. Holy oil from a church? Can't hurt. Holy water? Why the fuck not? If the situation is bad, and you believe it to be real why wouldn't you exhaust every possible solution?<br />
<br />
In essence this is like driving out a bad roommate, or a bad neighbor. Territorially piss if you have to, but get it out of your space. <br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i><b>Call in Firepower.</b></i></div>
<br />
Know a couple of gods? Don't know a couple of gods? Call 'em anyway. Call spirits you met once at a party that seemed nice. Call on your ancestors or mythic heroes. Call on Harry Potter if you need to because why? Because shit got real, and you need the help. If you are part of a religious institution that frowns upon "lapsed" status? Get caught up real fast. You're dealing with a set of rules that may be very old, and be there for a reason - the system itself may have spirits in it's unknowing employ to fuck with you when your ass ain't in the seat every (blah)day. <br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i><b>Call in Other Practitioners.</b></i></div>
<br />
THEN call in other people so that they have some Holy Protection working in their favor. Oh, and I don't even care if you're the most ardent of Pagans... if shit ain't working try going to a Church and having the devil cast out of you. If you don't believe in the devil maybe he crept in when you weren't lookin'.<br />
<br />
Why wait until here? I will out and out not deal with someone if, when they come around, I get the feeling they're trying to pawn off the problem onto someone else's shoulders. I need to feel that they have done their homework and tried "everything else" first.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i><b>From a place of strength, command it out.</b></i></div>
<br />
Self-exorcism, basically. You are made of dead stars and holy, secret, flame. You are dust and chemicals formed into a thing which <b><i>knows</i></b> it is made of dust and chemicals. You? Are a little god. Nothing in this universe or any other universe has permission to fuck with you unless you give it permission - and you haven't, right? Then speak from the 100% assurance that nothing has the right to fuck with you. That you are your territory and they
will get the fuck out or so help them god ('cause you won't) there will
be blood and intestines everywhere and they won't be yours.<br />
<br />
Own up to shit that you've done that might make you vulnerable and stop doing it (or do great aftercare). Own up to possibly having pissed someone off that might do bad things (and then stop pissing said people off). Own up to being marginally interesting enough to have caught the attention of something in the wild (and start learning how to conceal yourself, or alternately strap some eyespots and warning colors to your ass). Own up if you have pulled a total boner and invoked/evoked something you really should not have, or otherwise messed up a ritual (and stop doing that).<br />
<br />
But it still had no right, and you still have every right to smoke its ass. <br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i><b>Atropopaic Work to make sure it doesn't happen again.</b></i></div>
<br />
Keep up your wards. Bless your talismans often. Keep your space clean of things it might feed on, or properly contain those things with wards and locks. Cascarilla around your woo-shit helps, it really does. Routine smoke cleansings or asperging/misting with herbal brews.<br />
<br />
Jason Miller's Protection and Reversal Magic is a wonderful volume on this very topic, and is the one I recommend (and wish everyone owned a copy of so I didn't have to recommend it).<br />
<br />
At a later date I may do a more in-depth and instruction-filled post, but for now this is what I've got. <br />
<br />
<br />Scyllahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03822031765851992717noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1208084550257016582.post-52521479185172569512014-08-02T21:38:00.000-05:002017-07-28T13:39:06.078-05:00I Hear The Sound of Chainsaws. <table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjscn_fHd6BrmU4t4hW4HJwmUzwPUrjUmefJGsoKmKrcnpqkHl0wOlDtcAPMeByDTCfrOY1BN1ufzUs6WhwnghGhyrzOh1FqX4o4GXg_1CF0M-ebqwLuxAwfK-q0opV4gsKb51txWdt0bw/s1600/iseeyou.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjscn_fHd6BrmU4t4hW4HJwmUzwPUrjUmefJGsoKmKrcnpqkHl0wOlDtcAPMeByDTCfrOY1BN1ufzUs6WhwnghGhyrzOh1FqX4o4GXg_1CF0M-ebqwLuxAwfK-q0opV4gsKb51txWdt0bw/s1600/iseeyou.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">One of Granny Cedar's many Eyes. </td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><i><b>I Hear The Sound of Chainsaws. </b></i></span></div>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div dir="ltr">
It is coming from the deep, wild, woods. <i>I am revolted.</i> I cross the fences, descend down a hill and trail to the vast clearing that surrounds a sacred tree - beyond it, just out of sight, behind a veil of trembling leaves is the source of it all. It is beyond the River, and over the Hill - beyond the mythic horizon. It is something terrible, it's not merely chainsaws and bulldozers and bright blue floodlights. It is perverted, and its wrongness affronts me and raises primordial fear and disgust. The things it raises in the back of my head, the things I know it does and wants... they are the true evils. </div>
<div dir="ltr">
<br /></div>
<div dir="ltr">
And realize that this is a nightmare. </div>
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<br /></div>
<a name='more'></a><br />
<div dir="ltr">
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b><i>Weeks later it happens again.</i></b></div>
<br />
It begins the same but the destruction is further along. I watch as the bulldozers begin to gnaw away at the woods until the shape shifters and spirits are driven to flee. I give them sanctuary on my land... Even as the developers try to run them down with jeeps and guns. One of the shape-shifters attacks me as a last ditch effort: make me one of it's kind and I cannot possibly refuse their request (I would not have done so before, but I don't blame it for a lack of faith). I cry out so loudly that I wake my spouse, who begins trying to shake me out of the dream - I am yelling to the developers to get off of, and out of, my territory before I eat the heart and soul of every one of them. </div>
<div dir="ltr">
<br /></div>
<div dir="ltr">
Then it happens again. These intruders want the wild, but hate what dwells in it. They have turned the deep woods into a gentrified housing edition. Twelve foot high brick walls of perfect masonry (with just a touch of "rustic" flare), trees trimmed and ringed in white paint and squirrel guards. It affronts them that I allow "monsters" to dwell in my "glorious garden". I shout that the wilds aren't a garden, that the creatures in it are not monsters. That this place is not their place to claim and own. That I will not wish for nature to destroy them, but I will work for their destruction by other means. They tell me I am a redneck savage. That their wild is <i>THE </i>wild now.</div>
<div dir="ltr">
<br /></div>
<div dir="ltr">
Another week, another dream. The circus-sabbat of Unseen Things - like a page out of American Gods - encamped in my back yard that they have enlarged and turned into a mixture of things that were once there (and long-since torn down), and new structures they have erected out of the aethers. The rest-stop bathroom and dive bar are nice touches. They are rowdy and drunk and enraged... war is coming. War is coming to wrest control of the life force of the very land itself from those who would hoard it's bounty to their kin alone.</div>
<div dir="ltr">
</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i><b> The wild once owned the world. </b></i><br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: left;">
There was no thing that was not wild, untamed and free. Bit-by-bit People (not just Humans, but the other Hominids and Folk who learned to walk softly and carry a big stick) began to change it. Every creature does, don't get me wrong. Early Peoples were no different than ants, beavers, termites...etc. Our changes likely had the same beneficial nature in the beginning. Where we foraged we spread seeds, where we hunted we encouraged carrion-eaters. But, somewhere, somehow, <b><i>something</i></b> changed. </div>
</div>
<div dir="ltr">
<br /></div>
<div dir="ltr">
The imbalance was still there. Right up until we tamed lightening the true wild ate at civilization, and humanity. It once consumed what we wrested from it to survive. Now, it is the wild which huddles in it's hedgerows shivering and fearing our unnatural light. We bring poison and disease. We bring destruction and menace. We are the boogeymen, but we have cornered the beasts. We are unprepared for what we are now facing, when it has nothing left to lose. Civilization won the night battle, and the wilds were starved into madness. </div>
<div dir="ltr">
<br /></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: center;">
<i><b> It's no longer about "Us" and "Them"</b></i></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: center;">
<i><b> It's ensuring mutual survival. </b></i></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div dir="ltr">
The dreams so disturb me that I investigate while awake, I find a "For Sale" sign hanging on the fences nearby - adjacent to the Deep Woods, but too close for comfort. I weep.<br />
<br />
The wilds are being plowed down, wiped out, and paved over. Not this tiny scrap I know and love <i>per se,</i> but the entirety of the Wilds, and the spirit of them. Those savage, wonderful, spirits are being driven into the few remaining islands where the earth isn't being scorched and ruined to them. The Unseen Hosts are gathering forces, and rattling spears. </div>
<div dir="ltr">
<br /></div>
<div dir="ltr">
At the core of why I even dared to post about weird apocalyptic dreams: The sad truth is that it is not just "them" on the other side of that brick wall, it's "us" too. It's the Witches and Workers and Walkers who enter the Wild with the thought in their heart that this is there <i>for</i> them. The gentry amongst the monsters seeking to take and tame. Each of us must be cognizant of this, and vigilant against that kind of "manifest destiny" thinking. We are blessed to be here, we are given a rare gift to be permitted - to hear and know and understand and be granted access to the Holiest of Holies.<br />
<br />
If I have harped on any, one, point over the years... this has been that point. It will continue to be that point until that point is blunted, and rusted, and old, and considered as obvious as "the earth is round". </div>
Scyllahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03822031765851992717noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1208084550257016582.post-81561764429095565602014-07-21T16:24:00.001-05:002017-07-28T13:39:26.773-05:00Permissions.<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="242" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmWYho32HqxhsA4poOIr4GqIkSKDJpmOcB4tUH9c7OMxnEEzK0eCdUj-aHZx3gljMcyjrpTiiX0_Z7WxuZ0SPJ8TUxeC5boFohwtBkisw19ZvP_arV7iRqtIRe6d1kpdD0XbVxxIIPhL8/s1600/spikes.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="400" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Railway spikes found near a dump-site in the woods. <br />
Brought home and re-purposed to "nail down" the corners of my land.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i><b>I have decisions to make, but I'm not alone. </b></i></div>
<br />
Decisions about trees. Decisions about wildflowers. About fallen logs. About old bricks. Decisions about rocks. Decisions about dirt. Un/fortunately, I am not making these decisions solo. There are a myriad of spirits and forces that have to be taken into consideration before these decisions can be made. <br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
That might sound silly, but it's not. Not really. If I must ask a tree permission to take materia from it for Work (and offer in return, and ask the earth that I may leave that offering, and thank my tools for having dug that hole, and thank the grain that it allowed me to make the cake, and thank the... etc.) what permissions must I ask to fell it? It is not the tree's fault it grew where I would later need or want to put something. <br />
<br data-mce-bogus="1" />
Is
it safe to change any of it? Is that tree beloved of anyone? Any
spirit? I have to ask them all. I have to get a unanimous sign-off, and enter into (and resolve) any negotiations before it's done.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i><b>Then, there are ecological and conservationist considerations. </b></i></div>
<br data-mce-bogus="1" />
What species of wildflower IS that? Is it vulnerable? I've never seen
it before. I'll have to carefully exhume it with a large chunk of dirt
and turf in case it's a parasitic or symbiotic plant. But I still have to ask
them first.<br />
<br />
All of the relocated plants are going to a dedicated wildflower garden. The exceptional specimens will actually be getting quite a bit of TLC and attention for a while - I want to get to know the new neighbors. My new neighbors, my new (hopefully) friends. I think they'd want to get to know me as well. I'll come bearing routine gifts of fish emulsion fertilizer and water. Plants love that kinda thing. <br />
<br data-mce-bogus="1" />
Is
that fallen log now supposed to remain in situ? I need to put a driveway
here, can I move it a few feet away? Should I? Is somewhere else better? Does something live in there? I have to check for feral kittens, for baby raccoons, for rabbits, for snakes. And... I have
to ask them all.<br />
<br />
I have to fill this
area. I have to level it a little. The foundations are at risk if I
don't fix this, stick in a retaining wall. It's going to be foreign
dirt. Is that okay? How long will it be foreign dirt? Do I have to ask
the spirits of where the dirt came from? Horned One on a fuckin'
Tricycle... I have to ask everyone - EVERYONE EVER.<br />
<br data-mce-bogus="1" />
The bricks, surely...
surely these bricks are not now YOUR bricks, spirits? Can I move this
pile of old bricks over there and arrange them into a garden-wall? I kinda need to... y'know... put a gas meter here. I swear, they're still yours. They'll just be yours in a new configuration. Let me convince you of how nice that garden will be, please let me move these bricks.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i><b>This is the Wild, and these are the Rules.</b></i></div>
<br />
I have to ask
them first. ALL of them. Possibly get back with some of them when
they're a bit perkier. Because
I am a Witch, and this is the Wild, and I am a guest here sometimes and
sovereign others. I may hold title and deed, but they can fuck my shit
up if I piss them off. I have a thousand roommates who all pay equal or
better on the rent and consultations aren't simply respect, they're
mandatory. One mad roommate raises the stress, and suddenly we're all at each-others throats. <br />
<br data-mce-bogus="1" />
This is not a pleasure garden I stumble in to, to be welcomed and exhaled by everything as the Master and Keeper of it. I am privileged to be here, I am blessed that the land allows me to continue to be here. I will not fuck that up with manifest-destiny BS thinking.<br />
<br data-mce-bogus="1" />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i><b>Perspective.</b></i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
I'm sitting on the back of a Sleeping
Giant - zie's been restless lately, quaking, shaking, and grumbling away.
On my right hand is The Untamed Wood, cut through by The River
into the realms of life and death. On my left hand is The Giant's Bowl,
filled and empty in turns, so long-neglected that wildlife has come to
dwell there. Here, horsenettle has grown in the folds of the Giant's
clothes, through the deep kudzu blanket it had pulled over itself
before nodding off. Bitter amaranths and redbud trees conceal me from
onlookers - you'd have to really have a sharp eye to see the witch in
black, with their multi-colored shawl amongst the brown stalks.<i> This world would move without me. </i></div>
<br />
Untended,
wild, and the same. I am humbled by it, and in awe of it. I would not
have been made a Witch had the soil beneath my feet not risen up in
spirit-voice and demanded it of me. In awe of the perfection and beauty
which are inseparable from the grotesque horror and savagery. <i> </i><br />
<br />
<i>I am better for having known it, and so I strive to make it better for having known me</i>.<br />
<br />
And so I ask permission. I ask each and every one of the spirits. I put out a blanket call to the locals - Is this okay? Can we reach an agreement? I hear and see you, and aide by consent. If I betray the consent, I have betrayed them and their holy form. That is unforgivable for someone who has heard them and seen them, and knows they are real. <br />
<br />
May I move this rock? No? Then it'll stay there until and unless you decide otherwise. I'll put a little flowerbed around it so that no one else
tries. You want more rocks? I'll buy you rocks to go with that rock. That rock stays there. It's cool, man. <b><i>It's your rock. </i></b>Scyllahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03822031765851992717noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1208084550257016582.post-79844148905125815892014-07-02T19:00:00.000-05:002014-07-17T02:24:41.970-05:00Re:Blogging Familiar altar.<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://37.media.tumblr.com/26ef7d216ac9450fa098a792fb0f0f93/tumblr_n2azdsnIkz1qirc1to1_500.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://37.media.tumblr.com/26ef7d216ac9450fa098a792fb0f0f93/tumblr_n2azdsnIkz1qirc1to1_500.jpg" height="300" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Familiar Altar - Originally posted on Tumblr on 3/11/2014</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span id="goog_259737446"></span><span id="goog_259737447"></span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div class="caption">
<span style="color: #990000;"><i>The old setup of my familiar altar. This is how it was for a few years, on the lower portion of my gigantic oak altar. </i></span></div>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div class="caption">
<span style="color: #990000;"><i>The urns are hand sculpted and painted by me using a combination of
native clay slip and commercial under-glazes with lots of scraping. </i></span></div>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div class="caption">
<span style="color: #990000;"><i>However, the toadfrog lady smiling benignly at you (and her tiny green bottle) is by <a href="http://erinnightwalker.tumblr.com/">Erin Nightwalker</a>, and was inspired by the toadfroglady spirit in the urn between her and the deer skull. </i></span></div>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div class="caption">
<span style="color: #990000;"><i>Since this photo was taken the altar was completely redone, and Ladyfrog acquired several more trinkets and statues.</i></span></div>
</blockquote>
<br />
Posting photos of ritual regalia and familiar Things always takes a lot of arguing with myself and struggling in order to finally manage it. Because, to me, it feels rather like posting photos of one's friend or lover in the nude and possibly in a compromising position.<br />
<br />
But over time my familiars have explicitly stated that they desire to be photographed and posted, so I do. Yes, I airbrush out names and sigils, but at least viewers can still get a feel for things. Scyllahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03822031765851992717noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1208084550257016582.post-13256486093553502352014-06-25T19:00:00.000-05:002014-06-25T22:49:04.951-05:00Re-Blogging: First Spring.<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://38.media.tumblr.com/a25521ff8ccbc76d3f057cfad43291c0/tumblr_n27ld4VJht1qirc1to1_1280.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://38.media.tumblr.com/a25521ff8ccbc76d3f057cfad43291c0/tumblr_n27ld4VJht1qirc1to1_1280.jpg" height="296" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Early Spring Foliage - originally posted to my tumblr on 3/10/2014</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i><span style="color: #990000;">The Signs of Spring are getting to be a little hard to ignore. But one
could be forgiven for missing this one. A tiny 1/4” Least Bluet hidden
in early chickweed and wood sorrel sprouts.</span></i></blockquote>
First Spring doesn't happen until it happens. I don't even bother trying to conjure up the land serpents until they show that they're ready to wake up. I mean, really... "Never tickle a sleeping dragon."<br />
<br />
So when the first of them feels restless, when the blue has come off of its eyes and it seems ready to split the old skin and emerge shiny and clean then I will brave the chill of the night and drum and rattle and stomp until it gets the point and stops lazing about. <br />
<br />
The first signs could be anywhere from early February to April. If it goes much later... I simply tickle the dragon anyway. Scyllahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03822031765851992717noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1208084550257016582.post-71798385672854886832014-06-18T19:20:00.001-05:002014-06-18T19:20:39.357-05:00Re-Blogging: Garden Spider<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://31.media.tumblr.com/e10735615755ee22da5ce5cea49c1c9d/tumblr_mxzij2swpX1qirc1to1_500.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://31.media.tumblr.com/e10735615755ee22da5ce5cea49c1c9d/tumblr_mxzij2swpX1qirc1to1_500.jpg" height="400" width="311" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Garden Spider - Originally posted on my Tumblr 12/17/2014<a name='more'></a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="caption">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #990000;"><i>I am an arachnophobe. They scare the bejeebus out of
me, and I never try to pretend they don’t. But I saw this beautiful
lady a while back, and man I couldn’t not take a photo.</i></span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #990000;"><i>I still don’t like spiders, but I don’t hate these even if they have weird little torc-holding aliens on their butts.</i></span></blockquote>
To expand on the original content: When I say I am an arachnophobe I do really mean it. I was bitten by a spider as a child and still have the dime-sized scar from the ensuing wound. I'm not fond of them.<i> Not fond at all. </i><br />
<br />
<i>But</i>, she was worth defying fear. I mean, look at her! So I want you to imagine me ignoring my pants-shitting terror to kneel down, go into macro-mode on my camera and lean in within inches to take this pic. I did it because I thought "WOW! I want to share her with everyone! I want them to see how beautiful she is even if she is absolutely horrifying" And I think - <i>I think</i> - that's my ethos on the things that scare me in "woo woo" , too. I want to share them because they are beautiful, even when they scare me. <br />
<br />
I push through the fear, kneel down, get close and take a picture. It is hard work, but the pride that arises in the moment of success is very much worth it. Of course, I did crab walk away very quickly, so sometimes even courage has it's limits. </div>
Scyllahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03822031765851992717noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1208084550257016582.post-22839212380513002322014-06-16T21:23:00.000-05:002014-06-16T21:23:35.881-05:00Fangs and Claws. <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://www.unmuseum.org/werewolfbeast.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.unmuseum.org/werewolfbeast.jpg" height="200" width="173" /></a></div>
<br />
The clock has stopped ticking. My spouse's snoring has gone quiet. The cat's
grooming has ceased. Everything stills, utterly, completely, fully.<br />
<br />
The
only movement in my entire body is the slow surge of blood, and my
breathing. I am so still I can feel the swelling of veins move tissue
and muscle. I will, through sheer force, myself into a
point of consciousness somewhere behind my face, and nothing else. This is the reverse of phantom limb syndrome - my body is insensate and alien. I cannot feel my
breathing, my limbs, my blood, or the bedding. And thus removed I feel my body change, to be as it is when I run wild, ecstatic, in the night. As I reshape the
image of myself, I expand my awareness back into my body, bit by bit,
until I can occupy those changed members once again - first the surges
of blood, then the rock of breath.<br />
<br />
And then I am a beast.<br />
<br />
I stand up from the bed, and my skin
is there - empty, sagging, dead to the world. This new shape that had
been hidden in it crouches to get through the gap beneath the door, tip-toes through the
house, and out the chimney. It thuds down to the deck, through the garden
gate, and to the hedgerow fence. As soon as my toe crosses the line, the
pack is there, waiting.<br />
<br />
Doing this is different than "just ending up" at the Sabbat-hill. The conscious direction stays, and so it is with the others there. We make our signs and off we go, faster than fast. Blazing, blurring, twisting. Half-smoke, half-form, bestial and wild as demons.<br />
<br />
Tonight our hunt is sinister. A black bear the size of a house takes us thundering to another person like us - a horse so beautiful it's just a shame what's about to happen - we eat him. I know that some terrible law was broken, and that his body in this world must be taken from him so it cannot occur again. I really have no idea what happens to him when he wakes up. I imagine this un-asked question is answered by "nothing good." <br />
<br />
And the strange thing is, I can tell that my spouse is shaking me in the bed. I've howled in my state, he's getting upset. I gallop back, crawling between my own teeth like smoke so that I can draw a perturbed breath and say "The hell did you wake me up for?" - I have to come back quickly, he gets scared because when I'm asleep a ladybug's fart wakes me up, but when I'm out... I may as well be dead.<br />
<br />
I can taste horse. Not the blood, or the meat. But the musk and sweat. The froth and foam of a panicked prey-animal. The clock is ticking. My spouse is settling back into snoring. The cat is slurping noisily at her toes.<br />
<br />
For that night there will be no more flight. Scyllahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03822031765851992717noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1208084550257016582.post-26317483480522295662014-02-02T01:14:00.000-06:002014-02-02T01:14:36.177-06:00Nostalgia. <br />
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. <br />
<br data-mce-bogus="1" />
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. <br />
<br data-mce-bogus="1" />
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.<br />
<br />
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. <br />
<br />
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?). <br />
<br />
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. <br />
<br />
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.<br />
<br />
I reconnected and remembered. Scyllahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03822031765851992717noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1208084550257016582.post-9326762184357260022013-10-08T16:58:00.000-05:002013-10-10T04:06:42.933-05:00The Three Questions - Consumption and Adaptation in Craftwork.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5135/5492594813_6bf575bd5e.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="206" src="http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5135/5492594813_6bf575bd5e.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
This was going to be a post about how I made myself a ritual broom. It was all tidy and had it's ducks in a row. It was clean, and instructional, and got to the point early on. And then it exploded. Well, it didn't explode but the point changed - it went from a post about how I made a Really Traditional Broom that's Not Even Remotely Traditional directly to an examination of the process of "consumption" in the New Age, Witchcraft and Neo/Pagan communities.<br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i><b>Do I Need (Insert Thing Here)?</b></i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
I do not live in England - I've never even been. If I did visit they'd have to drug and hogtie me to get me back on the plane. Because England is a land of Curry, Clove Cigarettes and Good Beer... It's the promised land. It's also the land where 90% of Witching Herbs And Woods grow naturally, free for the plucking, along every roadside and hedgerow. It's the land where there aren't poisonous things to nip my ass cheeks when I'm drunk, skyclad, and <i>fall down go boom</i>. <br />
<br />
My land is pretty damned rural, but I don't have Hawthorn and Yew trees banging around to spare. I don't have Birch and Ash in my witching woods - but I do have a lot of "tallgrass" growing in the less maintained areas. I don't "know" Yew, or Blackthorn or English Oak. I know Red Cedar, Chickasaw Plum and Post Oak. But, at least, the English native plants have a <i>place</i> in my craft, if not a deeply entrenched one. They are not especially scarce in England, and they're not especially problematic to grow on my own land. I can import, and adopt.<br />
<br />
The same cannot be said for a lot of herbs and resins often cited as one of the XYZ Number you Absolutely Must Have in your Witchy Cupboard. White Sage is on the decline in the wild, a U.S. native that was once plentiful is becoming scarce and hard to find due to over-harvest for the "Smudge" market - Sweetgrass is right with it, too. Frankincense, Sandalwood, Aloeswood, and even Dragon's Blood are under serious pressures and becoming more scarce.<br />
<br />
Last year I watched Balm of Gilead at least double in price, and I've found local trees getting stripped by people selling it for the "prepper" market (they helpfully inform me, before telling me I not to bother going further back off of the trails - they've already picked there). Whole stands of cottonwood are bare to the height accessible by someone standing on the cab of a truck. <br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i><b>An Argument With/About White Sage, </b></i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i><b>and The Three Questions Everyone Ought to Ask Them-self. </b></i></span></div>
So, I thought I needed White Sage. White Sage has a particular vibe, it does the job pretty damn well, and it's incredibly easy to find. But then, there's the whole problem of it being driven extinct in the wild. There's the problem of cultural appropriation that rears it's head, even when it's not being used to "smudge". <br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i><b> Do <u>I</u> need </b></i><i><b><i><b>(Insert Thing Here)</b></i>? </b></i></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
I am a practitioner of largely English-flavored Witchcraft. Where it fits I have adapted my practices to work in an American context. The distances involved are greater, the wilderness is different, the nature of the beast is entirely disparate. Do I, Me, Scylla, need this thing? Am I treading into a cultural area where I don't exactly fit, and am probably unwelcome? Am I depriving someone else who IS welcome in that territory the opportunity due to financial and social privilege? </div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i><b>Do I <u>need</u> </b></i><i><b><i><b><i><b>(Insert Thing Here)</b></i></b></i>?</b></i> </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
I am on a budget. I am within a certain boundary. I have a great number of things at my disposal to utilize. Do I need it, or do I just want the thing? It's okay to just want something, but I also have to evaluate that want in concert with the above. If I don't need it, what do I need?</div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i><b>Do I need <u>(Insert Thing Here)</u>? </b></i></div>
Can I find an analogue that'll do the job, regardless of the above statements? Can I use Rosemary or just throw some Wormwood and Sulphur at it? Do I need this, specific, thing... or is there just a far better option I've yet to consider because that one is right in front of me? If I've passed the other tests and find myself here, then I also have to ask if I Need It... can I grow it or make it myself?</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br />
Yeah, I needed White Sage... So I bloody well bought I packet of White Sage seeds from Alchemy Works. Unfortunately, White Sage grows badly for me. It germinated, but it never thrived. No one can seem to keep their hands off of that particular seedling, and it's declining quickly. So even if I answered those questions to my own satisfaction, maybe I just ought to throw some goddamned rosemary at it - or buy some culinary sage. So that's what I did and the culinary sage has already yielded an ounce of dried leaves.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i><b>Substitutions, Exchanges and Refunds. </b></i></div>
<br />
The best way to find a substitute for a problematic article (be it due to rarity, due to price, or due to Just Not Having Any And I Need It Done Now) is to create a simple list of what the thing does, what "flavor" it has, and to fill the flavor profile with something else.<br />
<br />
In the case of "White Sage" we're looking at an orientation to Jupiter, an "airy" quality, a bang-up job of getting rid of Bad Things, purifying, cleansing, and "associated with bees". <br />
<br />
So, it would stand to reason that we want to look for these qualities in our substitute. A Jupiter influence isn't essential, unless you're working specifically with the planet. What is needed is "Airy", "Banshing", "Cleansing", and "Purifying" - Rosemary. Let's say it's 2am. Fine, let's haul ass to the Sack-n-Suds, by a little McCormic Rosemary jar. Problem solved. <br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i><b>So, right, The Broom.</b></i></div>
<br />
I wanted to make my own. I was prepared to order supplies online before I sort of stopped and considered that I didn't really need to. I asked myself the questions. I really, really, didn't need (or even want) the things I was about to order, and so I went for a walk. I gathered, from my land, the things that represented what I was looking for. I asked myself the three questions, and was satisfied with the answers I found. So, it's really not even about the broom, but about making sure I'm using my noodle. </div>
Scyllahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03822031765851992717noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1208084550257016582.post-5551266700729364562013-08-21T14:50:00.000-05:002013-10-10T04:06:31.967-05:00The Lonely Road and "Authenticity"After the death of my Mentor I made the attempt to re-connect to my upline. I made efforts to "get right" with them, and to establish better communication with my "siblings". My upline wanted nothing to do with me, or in fact with any of the "offspring" of my Mentor. It didn't matter that we were proper, because they just rather didn't like that Mentor was gay as a rainbow flag.<br />
<br />
I could react any number of ways, but the bottom line would be - I could take everything I knew and throw it out <i><u>or</u></i> I could accept that it damned well works and not really give a f*** about anything else. I chose for no f***s to be given. I chose to not engage with "coven" anymore, until such time as the Powers see fit to stamp my ass and hand me a passel of neophytes. I will tell them the full history of what they are about to learn, blemishes and all. They, too, can choose. <br />
<br />
I'm not telling you to do what I do. I've <i>mentored</i> people and specifically told them to not do what I do. Who would <i>want</i> to do what I do? I have now been an Occultist for longer than I have not by a good
measure. I saw the online pagan infantcy, its
bumbling toddler years, its slow progression to childhood, its tweens...
and now its awkward coming-of-age (its just about ready to go off to
college, I think, scrambling for the future). The last two years have
shown something really unflattering slowly burbling to the surface of
online-pagandom's personality... insecurity.<br />
<br />
A is for "Authenticity" - the stuff that really, really, doesn't matter.<br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a>There
are billions of unique individuals who can be slotted roughly into
various categorizations. None of them look at a five-year-old and say
"You can't be a person, because I was a person first. You're just
copying me.", none of them say "Hey, kid... I was blond WAY before you.
Stop stealing from me." none of them say "Oh, look how special you think
you are with your bent pinkies. JFC, get a life, poser!" So, it
shouldn't come as any shock or surprise that I don't enjoy seeing people
do pretty much this exact thing when it comes to every, single, facet
of Occultism and "woo woo" topics. <br />
<br />
There is a need amongst humans in general, but more specifically witches, to be able to distinguish "I'm in
this for the long haul" from "I'm in this to make my parents
uncomfortable." It is the
fundamental statement "I am not shallow about this. This is important to
me. I do not want to even be thought of as having come to this place in
a shallow way." Because, well, we've all me that one really shallow
person - in fact, that statement probably brings one or more people to
mind. I could go through a list of flaky characteristics, but you
already know that person.<br />
<br />
It's not about trying to
claim you're something you're not - unless you are. It's about making
sure that there is a distinction - a distinction that is important to
you. But is the distinction all that important?<br />
<br />
I
picked up my first book in Witchcraft because I wanted to see if it did
the job. It could've been a worse book, but goddamn, it could've been a lot better (Watch as the witch raises her fist to the sky and shouts "Damn you, Cunningham!!!") I called myself "Wiccan" for a
while. I was wrong. It did not change the value of my heart, my soul, or
my craft. I pursued the thread through Chaoism, through half-hearted
Heathenry, through Egypto-Paganism, Tradcraftiness, Ceremonialism...etc.
And I'm here, where I am, doing what I enjoy doing. I have little bits
of all of those things hanging around and I have absolutely no issue
with how new or old any of it is.<br />
<br />
The results are authentic, therefore whether or not anyone approves of the methods is no nevermind to me.<br />
<br />
So, here's a handy checklist for authenticity:<br />
<ol>
<li>Does it work for you?</li>
</ol>
If you put a checkmark by it, it doesn't matter how many people tell you you're just playing at it - it works for you. Yes, absolutely listen to criticism on cultural appropriation, and labels, and names. Listen to those things, heed them, work with the flow and make the changes that you may need to make to set things right if you've transgressed. But if it works and you're not hurting someone else with it... who cares? It's bloody-well authentic.<br />
<br />
I'm not telling you that my path is <u>the</u>
path - in fact, I'd prefer most other folks keep off my particular fork
of the crooked road. I'd prefer it not to go the way of "wicca" where the climate gets crowded with gawkers,
freaks, geeks, and predators waiting to hop off of a particularly sturdy
tree and "attune your chakras".<br />
<br />
So, why am I blogging?
Because I want people to understand that there's more. There's always
more. Every plant, animal, and mineral on the face of this earth can
teach you it's own kind of Witchery. Some of it is fantastically,
glitteringly, astonishingly, innocent... and others are red in tooth and
claw.<br />
<br />
THE Mysterium - THE Secret - THE Point is that
your road was with you from the beginning, and is the road you will
stumble out on to the moment you stop trying to walk down someone else's.<br />
<br />
And yet, at the uttering of this, the response is often "But... HOW?" - Go, be a witch. "But how?"<br />
Years and years of hard work and dedication. Find a plant you love and learn it, better it by having it better you. Find an animal and learn it's Craft. Or a spirit-familiar. There are thousands of ways of doing just that, and I'm sure one that'll suit you just fine. Scyllahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03822031765851992717noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1208084550257016582.post-14837768912189428752013-07-23T00:40:00.000-05:002013-10-10T04:06:21.396-05:00De-Fluffing Minerals: Quartz (Crystals).<div class="caption">
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b><span style="font-size: large;">The Second Most Common Mineral On Earth, </span></b></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>And They Expect You To Pay How Much For It?</b></div>
<br />
Quartz Crystal is a naturally occurring mineral
with an impressive range of colors and inclusions. It is the second most
common mineral on Earth, with the chemical formula SiO<sub>2 (Silicon Di-Oxide). </sub>On
a chemical level Quartz is identical to glass, being that glass is made
out of sand, and sand is what happens to quartz when the earth does
it’s normal, brutal, routine on it. The only real difference is the fracture pattern, and some places have begun faking exceptional quartz "specimens" with cut, polished, glass. <br />
<br />
The major categories are <i>Macrocrystalline</i> (Crystals) and <i>Microcrystalline/Cryptocrystalline</i>
(Masses). Dozens upon dozens of other minerals are technically nothing
more than Crypto Quartz with an inclusion or impurity composed
of another mineral.<br />
<br />
Macrocrystalline Quartz also comes in a bajillion formations (often
called “configurations") which are said to subtly alter the “energy" of
the crystal and may include other mineral types (as above) rendering a
lot of data and types and far more waffling and wall-feeling on the
matter. Right now, I have balanced on my knee a gigantic mofo of a book
(hint: It’s purple) with 80 pages dedicated simply to “quartz"
(macrocrystalline). Lots of waffling.<br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
<br />
For more information on the actual sciencey side of things try the amazing <a href="http://www.quartzpage.de/">The Quartz Page</a>. Nearly every fancy configuration you'll find is de-fluffed, de-mystified, and explained there in very plain, scientific, terms. That will go a LONG way in helping locate and procure high-quality, well-priced, Quartz in the future. <br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i><b>De-Fluffing The Hype<span style="font-size: small;">.</span></b></i></div>
<i><b> </b> </i><br />
Quartz has unique electrical properties. Because of this it is
possible to have literally every bit of tech we currently enjoy. Quartz
was recognized as something unique and special even by ancient peoples.
Ancient peoples who did not have gigantic, ten pound, purple books to
tell them how special it was. You don’t need one either. Pick up the
rock and give it a squeeze.<br />
<br />
Quartz has almost limitless configurations. Follow your vibes on a
per-crystal basis, maybe look ‘em up online to augment. But don’t fall
into the trap of “This is a $500 configuration, but this one’s a $1
configuration" - <i><b>reminding everyone once again that quarz is the second-most common mineral on the Earth, and the Earth is rather big and thus rather full of Quartz. </b></i>None
of them are $500 configurations, “just because it’s shaped like this". It might be an exceptionally rare formation, it might be an exceptionally geologically/minerologically valuable specimen. BUT, when it comes to the "energy" side of things it’s only worth $500 if that single, particular, rock HAS to
come home with you and you feel like it’s worth it.<br />
<br />
99% of the time the crystal itself will tell you what it’s good at
(or chortle at you knowingly while you flounder until you ask just the
right question). Don’t limit it just because a book or website says so.
Even me.<br />
<h4 style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><i><b>Locality Specimens are BS. </b></i></span></h4>
Being mined at ThunderBallsCanyonMountainAngelRidge doesn't change the configuration of the quartz, and does not make it any more or less special. Locality Specimens (named FOR their locality, rather than simply, nicely, providing it alongside the crystal) are often sold at inflated prices because of the fame or infamy of the mine's owner. The thing they don't tell you is that numerous mines are often clustered onto the same mountain, and sometimes drawing from the same open pit. In Arkansas they're also usually all being leased from the same family (The Coleman's appear to own ... the entirety of Mount Ida). TBCMAR just had the luck of getting the lease at that location, pulling that pocket, and possibly only ended up with those specimens because they traded some of their own to a nearby camp. TBCAMR's $400 "Angel Goddess TBCAMR" configuration is just an "Isis", which also just happens to be a Dauphine Habit quartz that has a five-sided face. It is a $2 crystal anywhere else. <br />
<br />
If you went to a mine, and you went "WOW, the vibes here are just fucking fantastic." that is when a Locality specimen has merit. At which point you could simply pick a pebble up off of the ground, really. <br />
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<i><b>New Age Means Higher Prices.</b></i> </div>
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<br /></div>
Go with Rock Shops over New Age/Occult Supply, if you can. At a mineral shop on Austin Texas I got a lovely "Harlequin" (Hematite speckled) quartz point that was about 2" long for <i><b>$0.50</b></i>. The same type rock is often priced nearly <i><b>$30.00</b></i> at local "psychic", newage, and witchy shops. Go with Lapidary and Mineral shops FIRST. Know what you're looking for, poke around until you find it, and don't buy specially labeled/cased minerals that have their configurations listed unless you have to.<br />
<br />
Now, I do urge people to support their local woo-woo shops, but I also urge people to urge their local woo-woo shops to stock smart, and sell useful things that can't be gotten easily anywhere else, over selling sameness at a higher price. I can get glass candle-holders anywhere, don't stock those. Stock handthrown pottery candle-holders inscribed with eldrich glyphs and festooned with pagan gods, kthnx. <br />
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<i><b>Colorful Quartz And Whether Or Not It's Fake.</b></i></div>
<br />
Smokey Quartz, Amethyst, Citrine and Rose Quartz are irradiated. Either naturally, or done by
humans. The darker the color, generally the stronger the irradiation.
While the majority of these have been screened before distribution, it
is NOT unheard-of for one or two to still be “hot" (radioactive). So, another reason to go for rock shops. They often expressly list "Artificially Irradiated" and "Heat Treated"<br />
<br />
"Citrine" is often, in fact almost always, heat-treated amethyst. True citrine is rare, expensive, and often so different in coloration from what most people know of as "citrine" that you'd mistake it for niccotine stains, or a very weak Smokey Quartz - which is exactly what it is. <br />
<br />
Varieties like "Tangerine" and "Pecos Diamond" are not irradiated, but contain impurities/inclusions of iron oxide that shade them from orange to black. They're usually opaque, or at least very, very, orange.<br />
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<i><b>Now That I've Said All Of That, There Are Exceptions.</b></i></div>
<br />
There are some configurations that are something-like how they are advertised. These are usually quite common, easily identified, and seem to "stand out" - that could be because they have an affinity for me (or vice versa), but I can't exactly write from someone else's experiences. <br />
<br />
<i><b>Channeller</b></i>, <i><b>Transmitter</b></i> and <i><b>Trans-Channeller</b></i>. <u>Channellers</u> are a quartz with a 7-sided face on the front, 3-sided face DIRECTLY opposite of
it on the back. <u>Transmitters</u> have a primary 3-sided face, bordered on either side by 7-sided faces. Trans-Channellers have alternating triangles and seven-sided faces. These actually do seem to do something consistently
across all with this configuration, and that something seems to be
“access". Either it's the same action, or they are complimentary to each-other.<br />
<i><b><br /></b></i></div>
<i><b>"Double Terminated"</b></i>
Crystals have “points" at both ends. I don’t know where they produce
energy from, but they produce a lot of it, and it comes in steady
“pulses" outta both tips. The pulse can be sped up or slowed down with
good communication. Excellent for powering along a line in a sigil or
somesuch.<br />
<br />
<i><b>"Key"</b> </i>- More accurately, Lock and
Key. This is where a crystal has grown into or out of another and come
loose from that hole. IMO? They work best together, because they can be
used like a metaphysical padlock and key. Otherwise the usual “Keyed"
(Lock. Aka the one with the keyhole or dent) can be locked and unlocked
with woo/energy/power/sprowl.<br />
<br />
<i><b>"Lineated"</b> </i>crystals
look like they have nested “clothes iron" markings on the faces. To me, energtically,
these are absolutely a variety of Record Keeper. Scientifically, these are probably "Brazil Law Twin" quartz.<br />
<br />
<i><b>"Record Keeper"</b></i>
Crystals have raised triangles on their faces, and are supposedly used
to “store" information. Lots of books waffle on about Atlantis, Lemuria
and the moon-litten landscapes of Ye Olde Leng. I… don’t really believe
them. But what I think is that disembodied things might be able to nudge
the formation of a crystal, or maybe even decided to use it as their
home. Poke around, see what comes out. It's often helpful, if not always clearly-understood. Don’t pay an ass-ton thinking
you’re going to unlock the secrets of Atlantean Dolphin Mastery, though.<br />
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<i><b>Environmental Concerns.</b></i></div>
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<br /></div>
Quartz is mined rather horribly. Rather awfully. Rather unethically. Beyond that point, the peoples of the locations where this happen often get almost nothing for their hard work. The "Noble Savage" routine is often applied to this by new-agers who think it's just smashing that it was hand-mined in a mountain by a displaced Tibetan Buddhist and dragged down in burlap bags on a yak for their privilege. I really, rather, do not enjoy that. Maybe that's just me. <br />
<br />
So, in my opinion? The best choice is Arkansas quartz. I’ve been to
mines there (SPECIFICALLY Blue Moon Mine). Yes, they use boomsplode, but
the land/land spirits really don’t seem to care, and the wildlife isn't really all that bothered (deer and birds scatter, then wander back). They’ve seen worse
in the course of natural geology, and our little pop-pops don’t scare
them. They use small to mid-sized equipment. The land/spirits don’t really care. They sort clean and sell - the land cares a little about the cleaning process (oxalic acid, used to clean crystals, is incredibly toxic
and bad for the environment), but most places sell mine-run by
the bushel for a reasonable price (uncleaned, still covered in red mud).<br />
<br />
Digging your own (been there, done that) is incredibly rewarding and
interesting. You’re literally in the dirt with them. Some mines will
allow you to come with them while they open a fresh pocket and you get
to pick it clean (the fee is… in line with that awesomeness). You also
get a feel for particular crystals shouting “DUDE, ME! GRAB ME!" and
finding an amazing specimen coated in mud and grime, smiling at you
happily because it waited in that soil millions of years for your slow,
evolving, self. Just the soil from these places is a treasure trove of
microscopic crystals - I sat down with 600x magnification and some
tweezers and located dozens of configurations (because I’m a nerd).<br />
<br />
<i>(from a slightly shorter post on my tumblr) </i>Scyllahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03822031765851992717noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1208084550257016582.post-27985799350009639192013-03-02T21:35:00.000-06:002013-03-02T21:35:13.725-06:00The Dead You Know / Diaspora of The Dead / Holy Supper.<div style="text-align: center;">
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<i><b>Memento Mori </b></i></div>
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I remember my first experience of "death" - it was a relative, I don't know who. I did not understand why everyone was upset and sad. I did not understand why someone was in a box. The second experience was my great-grandmother passing. I still didn't understand what was going on, or why maw-maw as in a box. But I understood that Maw-maw wasn't in there, not really.<br />
<br />
Then, like a lot of kids, I had a short-lived pet and I thought I almost had it, then. It was ugly and awful and why would a good god do a thing like this? And then came living on a farm, where animals dying was normal, and explained. But people? Still clueless on that front, and then a... boy I really had a heart-on for died, and I turned into an emo little turd - I took his death as a personal insult from a spiteful demiurge and a source of torment from the world around me to punish me for some unknown crime.<br />
<br />
Then my grandmother died... and I still didn't understand it completely. I understood the mechanics, I understood the biology. I did not understand the psychology - I was a pretty newly minted witchling, and even though she wasn't in her flesh, her spirit was never absent, always visiting in dreams and leaving the scent of her perfume around. She was in 'heaven', her suffering was done - Why are we crying? She was kicking it with big J and the Angels. <br />
<br />
But I felt utterly, utterly, guilty for not feeling really, really, really bad. Now, another fifteen or so years later, my last grandparent has left the world. And I <i>get it</i> now. It took me a lot longer than most to leave the swoon of childhood innocence and skillful, wonderful, constructive self-deception to simply<i> mourn</i>.<br />
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<i><b>Working With The Dead You Know.</b></i></div>
The
Ancient faiths from which modern Witch practices descend (in part)
were not working with strangers from strange lands in most of their
work. They were not working with vague archetypes, or spirits with no verifiable history. The only people who had ever died on their soil were <i>their</i> people,
family members, ancestors, cousins, brothers, friends, and companions.
And so, since that Ancient spirit-worker and I share the same sort of human
brain, and the same sort of feelings of "<i>love</i>" and "<i>empathy</i>" - I've come
to suspect that there was no fucking around when it came to their beloved dead.<br />
<br />
I know a
lot of people who will happily trudge into the muddy mire of discussing
the suffering state of a soul or spirit - hell, I do it to when it is part of figuring the spirit out (see "Unseelie"). They will get down into specific details
of it's rage, sadness, and ire. And I wonder, would they do it if that
soul had been one of their tribe? Someone they knew, loved, treasured
and mourned. I don't think they would be so quick to have a circle jerk
of suffering. <br />
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<i><b>The Not Fucking Around. </b></i></div>
It's
different. When a co-worker died a while back... He and I got a lot closer. I had gone to bed early the night his life ended, and dreamed what happened. I was there with him when he slipped his skin like an ecstatic, and never came back. I walked him through the first hours of his new existence.<br />
<br />
With those gentle nudges and subtle words wizards are
supposed to use, I find out the details behind "Jim" and his non-work
life. His family are heartbroken, but they are also glad to have someone
to vent to. And I learn that even though I did not know him that well
in life the way I see him in death is a flawless image of how he was
outside of the office. Which means it's not a <i>dream</i>. So, sometimes
when I'm asleep I go out of myself and visit him. I take my time to
explain where things are in "Project Get Jim Closure", and to use the
full extent of whatever authority I can get to help ease his situation. I
bring him things he likes, and try to cool his frustrations. I try to
get answers to pass on - in that wizzardy way - and that's the worst
part of all.The Not Fucking Around part - the part where I have to lie, and give lip service. And pretend it's not happening.<br />
<br />
Death is a one-way street to most people. When you breach the line, and
start to speak of the dead as though they continue on ("Is" rather than
"Was") you're driving the wrong way in traffic. You're bringing back
something unholy and unnatural - right? I mean, that's what the stories
say. Everyone's unholy and unnatural when you resurrect even the shade
of their memory. It's hard... and it hurts. <br />
<br />
I leave him things - Coffee, Cigarettes... sugary-carbo-treats. I lie by omission. Jim is dead and in heaven and at peace and at rest and death is a one-way street. No one drives the wrong way. We're all very, very, safe. <br />
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<b><i>The Diaspora of The Dead.</i></b></div>
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<br /></div>
I did the Holy Supper challenge last year, more or less. I made a pot
of heavy oxtail stew and served a bowl to the nearly desolate
crossroads. I had splashed the stone arch with a pint of beef blood that
steamed and froze to it. And I thought that this year would be the same
- Feed the spirits, share drink with them, walk away before I tread into territory that <i>drove the wrong way in traffic</i>.<br />
<br />
December 19th - The Wild Hunt roared in. It was loud and
violent. If one
listened with the right ears they would hear the fists of the dead
beating
at the windows, the gutters, and the walls. I toss and turn, I am
restless. It's the middle of Winter and I cannot help myself - I crack
the window only slightly, and feel their hands rush in for me. I am
gripped by the shirt-collar of some internal part of myself and I am
wrenched from my flesh by bony fingers. I run,
leap, slither and soar with them. I am as wild as the worst of them, and tree
limbs break under our furious rattling.<br />
December 20th - I leave my skin of my own volition this time. It is not the
rushing madness that greets me, but a slow procession of souls. These
are not the restless, these are the lost and wandering. They cannot
dissipate, because they <i>are</i> forgotten and because they <i>have</i> forgotten. The homes they
would have returned to have dissolved into the mud, or been torn down.
The world they know has changed so utterly, so drastically, that there
is nothing left for them to recognize.<br />
"Where am I?" One of them asks me. Her accent is thick, spilling over her lips with tonality of the Ukraine.<br />
"Oklahoma. Er... Indian Territory? Er... essentially in the middle of the Continent? America." I explain. <br />
"I made it, then. Good." <br />
"Yeah, you made it, Ma'am." <br />
"Good, good." She says, vacantly. She pats me on the shoulder and keeps walking - her eyes never stop their searching sweeps.<br />
<br />
The
world is blackness. There are fires licking at the sky everywhere, but
the fires are dim and gray to me, surrounded by charcoal-drawn people of
every culture and shape. And far in the distance, beyond shifting forms
that come in and out of focus (as though into a circle of light around
myself) I see a fire of red and orange bursting against the bleakness
around it. Yet, before I can reach it I wake, aching in my bones with
cold.<br />
<br />
December 21st - "The end of the world". The Wild
Hunt, The Furious Hordes, they've come and eaten the unwary. They've
sucked the sap from the trees, and licked honey from bowls until their
tongues had rasped the glass like etching solution. The lost and wandering
have trampled the grass flat at the crossroads, and secreted away the
honeycakes. It is quiet. <br />
<br />
I take bread and stew down to the crossroads. It's unseasonably warm, and so I stay there. I allow myself the potentially dangerous act of leaving my skin at that place (I salt it so no one else tries it on while I'm out) and walk through the gloaming world between the day and night. And I found my ancestors there. I may not know names, or faces, or places, but I have struggled to recall them, and DNA is reaching out. <br />
<br />
I am a mutt. Because of that I feel
hard-pressed to say I have a "heritage" - I have ancestors of Name that I
can find among the Scottish clans, and of Irish farmers. Of English
glaziers and shipwrights. I have German hill-dwellers, and Native
American survivors. Spaniards and Frenchmen who piloted boats through
black swamp waters. I have ancestors of Story
who I cannot find, because they were not given the dignity of names or
headstones from which to take rubbings. And a history with the soil under my feet that isn't
even as long as my own life, but shockingly, personally, intimate.<br />
<br />
None
of my blood is from this soil. Not a drop of it. Not the Scottish, the
Irish, the English, the Germans. Not even the Native Americans - this
was only their land by force. Before that they were from the Great Lakes
and the East Coast.<br />
<br />
And yet, everywhere I go I take them with me. In my heart. Literally. In slow, thudding, rushes. It <i>isn't</i> a one-way street. It is not a line. It is not a "Tree". It is the tidal surge of blood pumping out and returning. Life, death, life, death. Forgetting and being forgotten is just bleeding out.Scyllahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03822031765851992717noreply@blogger.com0