Well, then...

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... already 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). 

So here's something I was going to talk about a while ago, and dusted off to finally talk about now.

I Hear The Sound of Chainsaws.

One of Granny Cedar's many Eyes.

I Hear The Sound of Chainsaws. 

It is coming from the deep, wild, woods. I am revolted. 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.

And realize that this is a nightmare. 

Fangs and Claws.

The clock has stopped ticking. My spouse's snoring has gone quiet. The cat's grooming has ceased. Everything stills, utterly, completely, fully.

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.

And then I am a beast.

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.

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.

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."

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.

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.

For that night there will be no more flight.

The Dead You Know / Diaspora of The Dead / Holy Supper.

Memento Mori

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.

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.

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.

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 get it now. It took me a lot longer than most to leave the swoon of childhood innocence and skillful, wonderful, constructive self-deception to simply mourn.

The Cauldron-Stirrer...

There is a woman in the clearing. She's atop a slab of stone, sitting semi-native style, her calves down and wrapped around a large cooking pot. She reaches around her in the dim firelight, pulling bundles of this, sprigs of that, sections of roots. Into the pot they go.

She is muscular, agile. Her hips are wide, and seductively curvaceous, but she has broad shoulders and thicker arms than most women would want. Leaning next to her is a forked pole, rubbed smooth by sanding and sealed with wax and sacred oils, it is shaped like the tines of an inverted peace symbol. Around her shoulders is a scrap of shawl, enough to keep the chill from her back, should the fire before her not provide enough heat. Around her neck is a mantle of bones, stones and shining beads.

Her face is shrouded by heavy hair, it's elbow-length and wild. The ends are rough in the front, suggesting she's recently cut away the forelocks with a knife... probably to clear her vision. Her face reminds me of Anjelica Houston, twenty or thirty years ago. She is a handsome woman, but razor-sharp, weaponized, and lovely.

Around the fire before her cavort all manner of creatures. They do so with the good nature of somewhat inebriated party-goers, tittering on flutes, bashing drums and whooping every time the fire pops and sends a soap-berry chasing after someone's legs.

It seems that she is a fixture of the land. The beasts and beings neither give her a particularly wide berth, nor stray too close. When one of them crosses before her, they seem to nod a little in her direction. It is accepted that treading directly into the space around her is a poor idea, or so the body-language says. Behind her, in the shadows, is a massive shape of fur and twisting skin.

Opposite her, beyond the flames (where I cannot clearly see him) is a tall man, wearing a hooded cloak made of animal hide, and crowned with a set of horns (antlers? they seem to shift like branches in the wind). To me, he is shadow, and yet his presence reaches around the fire-circle like dark wings. He is sitting on a fallen log, one leg tucked into the bend of the other's knee and his right hand rests in the crotch of a short stang. It is his crutch... I think. The leg which does not touch the ground seems fairly well lamed. I realize that it is his side of the flames where I always am, and he is always behind me, but now I'm somewhere in the middle.

I find myself moving toward her, the razor-faced woman in the threadbare shawl. Goatboy tugs at my pant-leg. He suddenly reminds me of "Dobby", knowing he can't say something important, but imploring me with his eyes to stay the fuck by the fire. I kneel down to him, so we're roughly the same height and ask him if he's able to tell me why he doesn't want me to move. He looks at Her, then at Him, then at me. He gets a somewhat constipated look. I feel a rush of fear.

"It's okay Goatboy... I can always think of my feet." I tell him. He seems to get it, or at least the gist of it, and lets go of my pant leg. He still won't stray beyond the edge of the disturbed soil. He won't go up to where the light of the fire seems to bend to avoid her throne.

I kneel, just off to the right of her. The shadow writhes. I look up at her razor-face, it is physically and psychically painful. And I say "Am I dead?" - It wasn't the question I meant to ask. Far from it, actually. Funny how these things happen. But her face seems to split in two, ear to ear with a toothsome grin, full of absolutely mirthless laughter.

This is the maw of death, just north of the maw of rebirth. She must consume to give birth. She is a black hole which forms around it's orbit a beautiful galaxy. Periodically consuming things, so that the energy of it's decay forces the remaining survivors further beyond reach. But without her pull, nothing would ever form. Without matter being devoured, nothing would survive... And as soon as this vision arises, it departs. She is beautiful again, and not quite so hard to look at. "You wouldn't be here if you weren't a little." she says... without really speaking.

It is by her leave that all things pass to and from death, she rules the Underworld, and all of it's gods, with an Iron fist, for all things must pass between on her roads. Hers are the things that go bump, that hide from sight, and are never truly beheld. The black shucks, and poisonous toads. Rats and crawling things. Beasts which mingle races. Races which no one living ever gets to behold.

I scrape and bow my way back to the firelight, and I feel the rush of air, and light, and sound come back at me. Goatboy pats me affectionately on the knee where I've collapsed squarely on my ass. "You warned me. I ignored you. Let's say score one to you, good sir." Goatboy grins. The sounds of the fire are mostly drowned out by the pounding of my heart. He passes me a horn of mead, with a look stating that I cannot refuse this time, and that if I do he'll personally ram me. I accept the fairy-drink, which tingles on my tongue with the bitter explosion of Solanine and Dandilion. Another human, though debatably so, drags me to my feet and into a dance around the fire. I dance until the sun begins to rewind from the West, and then I run... I fly, I gallop on all fours. I shift and change through a dozen forms and fall from a great height into my body.

I suck down several glasses of ice-water, and sit up in bed for a bit. For all the morons, like myself, who've dance on the edge of death, bang-faced, and arrogant : Never in my life had I been so glad to draw breath.

Also, no, his name isn't Goatboy. But I'm not going to post his actual name. That'd be a bit gauche.

The Night Flight

I'm running, and I know there is no way I could be moving at this speed. I have a bad knee, and a heart complaint that will usually floor me well before this. The trees are whipping by me, they blur into shadows.

As I reach the edge of the deep wood, coming out on the scrub and younger growth, I leap. It is not simply that I jump, feet leaving the ground. There is a magnetic repulsion, a sense of a pull being broken, and turning to resistance. I fly.

I am rushing at great speed over the meadows, the little trailer houses below. Over vast lakes, until the world changes. The colors shift, and the air no longer stings my eyes. The world beneath me glows with a light I cannot locate. I see below me spirits, they stretch and writhe beneath the moonlight, anchored with their feet in the earth - Wort-devas. Others fill the sky with me, further and nearer. Some wear nothing, some fly on their own, some are animals or with animals. Some are astride instruments like brooms and distaffs (among them I am pleased to discover a Nimbus 2000). One rides a hobby-horse with coal-red eyes and dangling, articulated, legs.

I see a fire below, it whips with every color, and smells sweeter than any incense. In it I detect notes of Oak, of Pomegranate, and sweet gum. I smell blood, and meat, and spices. Nothing in the world of my birth has ever smelled this alluring, or sweet.

I settle to the ground, feeling the push become pull and the world accept my feet again. Here there are beasts dancing. Some are witches like myself, wearing masks or strange costumes, some are spirits who have never known flesh, clad in a manner that is designed to shock, and frighten. These people are my kenfolk (not KINfolk, KENfolk.). I join the music-making, slapping along to the rhythm on my knees. My body is my body, and is not my body. I'm neither sex, and yet both.

Someone passes a pot filled with incense. I feel it with my fingers, identifying it's contents. I know that if, when I return to my flesh, I burn this on a woodfire, I will cut a much simpler door. I won't have to fly so far, or run for so long. I will be able to stay longer, and dance more. I cast a handful into the fire, and it sparks brilliantly. A whooping cry goes up from the Host. I've made a contract, an agreement to return.

We dance, and run, and play games. I am offered wine and food which I decline. Here, I cannot eat, not that I don't want to. Everything smells so perfect, so delicious. I swear I've been offered curry - the bastards. What I eat here would disgust (if not anger) even the Kindly Host, who's appetites shock humans with ease.

Soon, off in to the West (WEST?! ... Yes, West) I see the sky begin to pale, the night is rewinding into day. So this is how we may remain here for years, and not age? Funny, I'd never noticed. This is the signal that we all need to depart. Some fall through the soil, some rise to the air on tools. Some take wing or paw. I run, run with wolves, deer, and hares. A firefly has hitched a ride on my head, flashing and laughing (clickityclick!). A howler-monkey swings from tree to tree. Our rag-tag pride enters the wood, we run until the field clears and one by one - pop -, we awaken, panting and laughing.

Who would not risk death by fire, for life by the fireside?

The Black Book of Dead Names.

Herein I will utter to you the unutterable names of the boundless, fathomless, horrors we have been blessed to forget. Herein I will deliver unto you each of the damned keys, which open god-made doors. Herein I will say to you all caution, which you will not heed. Herein I will lay your doom. - Necronomaicon of M.·. S.·.

I walk into the vaulted library. The walls are water-slicked, and glassy. Each room is immeasurably tall, but rather small in "floor space". A winding balcony follows the shelves upwards, and down. Down is nearly impossible to get to, past a certain mark the library is flooded. The librarian alone is able to penetrate to the bottom - though it may be 'water', it is not water that floods this place. I have him find all of the books that hold reference to "Necronomicon", and keep them on a high shelf.

Some volumes are barely there, tatters, shreds, sodden, faded, burnt. Careful coaxing brings them back to readability. Others are fully fledged, and fall open with a touch. Some are locked with heavy hasps that must be prised with magick, not tools.

I heave one from it's shelf, and take it to the small reading room. There it falls open to a page, carefully illuminated in rust-colored 'ink', of two serpentine beings supporting an eye within a diamond.

It strikes me as funny, people speak of and write of the Akashic Libraries as some immutable fact, but does anyone ever go there and check something out? No, because that takes careful reading and transcription.

... It's worth the effort.