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.

Peace is for the boring, run free brother!

Yesterday morning, I woke from a strange dream of the Sabbat circle. The others had fled back into the darkness, as the sun wound itself backward from the West. The Father and Mother, they left as well. Shadow and mist evaporating in the light. The embers of the fire were low, and hot, rolling in the colors of sunset.

Across from me there was another witch. I'd seen him through the fire once or twice, but I wasn't sure. He was older than I remembered him, but glowed with a stronger inner fire. It'd been a coon's age since I saw him. Three, maybe four years. I'd had word, but he goes other places, and does other Work. I smiled, I cried out to him, and ran 'round the circle-edge to see him... one of the old gay men that taught this young 'Whatsit' how to be Witch.

"How have you been, you old fuck?" I shouted, we shook hands from the wrist and clapped backs.
"Sick. But I'm better now." He said, right into my ear.

I could hear and feel it all in the words. He'd been sick, and he died. He died well, with his mind still his own, but he had suffered immensely. No one had told us, because he did not want to be seen like that by any of us. He knew we would take his symptoms (against his will, if we had to), and he'd still die - and we'd all suffer. It had been so fast I didn't even dream of teeth...

"Oh... Oh... no. But at least They fetched you here..."
"'Oh no', 'Oh yes' and don't fuss over me. It doesn't hurt anymore. And I wasn't -fetched-, I got here the same way I always do. We don't need psychopomps - we ARE psychopomps." He gives me a look - still the teacher.

We talk, longer than we should. When the piping tones start to come from the treeline, we run. The old dog and I, barking, nipping and rolling... and he stops. He looks off toward the piping, and he smiles his hound-dog smile. And then he's gone... he's faery now.

I got the call late last night, beginning with "You already know, but..." . He taught me about the spirits in the wood, and how to induce the shifting state, and so many other things. He died very abruptly (thank the gods). He is survived by his husband, and the children he made in the Circle of Art. His Family, blood or not.

Magister of Philters.

Normal Dreams

I peel away the flesh of the living world. It comes off not unlike a wet bathing suit, sticking in corners and bends. Beneath is smoke, and shadow. One moment a hunched beast, the next a lithe serpent. I am roving the world, with strides that seem like flight. The world is the color of burned herbs, the vegetation I find has the brittle character of desert grasses. The sky is a mantle of ever-shifting cloud, there are no stars here. I'm galloping toward a great door that never seems to get any larger - I know it's hours away even at this speed, it's just that large. I keep moving, always moving.

Er... perhaps I spoke too soon.

Suddenly I find myself in a stone circle of sorts. There are stars, and I'm clothed in my usual body. Smoke curls away from me not unlike "materializing death eaters" - even in the dream I giggle about how fricken -awesome- that is. Everything is in a sharp relief, defined to it's very extreme, but colors are wrong - this is not my dream. As soon as I realize this, I see the figure.

He is tall, and slim, and wearing all black. He is perched on a three-legged stool, stirring a cauldron which hangs from a three-legged rack, being gently simmered by a threefold fire (nine sacred woods). He gives me an impatient look.

"How in the hell did I get here?" I ask, violently flailing at the trails of cloying smoke that still hang onto my clothes. "I was galloping through the wastes of the Elfhame..."

"Because I summoned you." He grumbles. The words slide out of him like someone sexually stimulating a cello. "Sit. Pay attention. Learn something worth having in your otherwise empty skull."

And I do. His authority is as plain as the neat little buttons on his coat. It is as plain as the look of barely contained contempt on his face. I want to ask how in the hell he summoned me, and exactly who he is - but the vissage he uses makes a suggestion so hilarious that I don't dare.

Discourse.

He shows me a philter which, by the removal of one herb and addition of another can either attract or repel serpents. He explains the subtle differences between Ferula species, and how these differences can be elevated, highlighted and made valuable.

He explains how some philters must be crafted in earthenware, not metal, and kept "cradled" by heat rather than "tossed" by it. He refers to stages of heat in fluid so subtle that Japanese tea houses would shriek. Here the alkaloids of Henbane are released, here they are 'sterilized', here they are destroyed, here all virtue of the plant is gone, "and at this stage you're burning it."

We discuss ingredients too fantastic to exist, and what substitutes someone such as myself might employ. Waxes and oils and herbs and subtle incantations - and he gives to me a single, small, black candle. And now I know how to summon him.

The Cemetery.

I had a very interesting dream almost a month ago. Most of it is hazy around the edges, except for the fact that I was visiting a fellow Filthy Magician out in California. At some point the question was raised: "Can you find a place of power here?" and at once I indicated off in whatever direction lie behind his kitchen.

His comments suggested that, yes, there is something off in that direction but that's hardly a place anyone wants to go. I, of course, wanted to go there. Amid protestations that one does not simply walk into Mordor, off I traipsed - directly through the wall. I called his bluff.

It was an excruciatingly beautiful cemetery - I've seen it before. I know it by it's scent, it's sight... by the waymarks at it's gates. It is, more or less, the exalted double of every cemetery that has ever, or will ever, exist. It is picturesque, moss-draped, and rife with the cthonic power of decay and rebirth. Here soma grows upon the knolls where the beloved dead sleep. Mandrakes sprout here, datura blooms, the whole place stinks of dark earth, and poisonous perfection.

I have spent whole nights roaming this place, greeting it's citizens and royalty. A particularly large tree overshadows a portal to the underworld. My magician companion is standing back, smiling fondly at the scene.

There was a funeral in full swing, a family who's attire and regalia marked them as practitioners of some form were laying one of their own to rest. Attending the services was a skeletal woman (her skull had been painted into the likeness of makeup) wearing a large flowered hat, and carrying a truly ruined parasol. She even had a tiny skeletal dog tucked under her arm as though it were a fashion accessory. My mind hesitates to say this is Holy Death, but perhaps her emissary, Vainglorious Death? A man lowers himself into the grave and impatiently motions for soil to be piled on.

The headstones read names that I knew - and yet did not know. Though I got the impression that a certain row was actually just me. Numerous copies of me from centuries passed, dead bodies I'd once worked with living vigor. And at the end of the row was an open grave - a promise and warning.

The ground is soft with growth, the trees bear no leaves, but stunning blooms and fruit. The fruit are stunning, in colors and textures of minerals rather than vegetation. Here, I get the sense, the Apple of Sodom and Fruit of Knowledge are not so mythotypal.

Being there, hell - thinking about being there, it seems to fill my lungs with air and soothe me and with the right eye, on the right "day", you can see into an unending green land, overcast, and misty. Bits of sun glinting through heavy clouds and intermittent showers.

Dreamwalker.

My dreams have never been what you'd call normal. I don't dream that I'm in a car, and suddenly I'm driving a pudding-shoe through the mall with my grandmother and my puppy from when I was six is chewing my favorite teddy-bear. I don't dream "weird dream stuff" - in fact, I'm not sure I ever really "dream".

We noticed things were weird when I was about five, maybe six. We were at my grandmother's and I was taking a nap in her rocking chair (on her lap, doubtlessly). I only vaguely remember this event, so I rely upon what I'm told: I awoke with a start, and began crying. When asked what was wrong I repeatedly insisted that we needed to go home, because something was attacking our chickens. That something had dug under the fence, and was getting them. I was, of course, ignored.

When we got home we found utter carnage. Our own dogs had escaped their fence, and dug under the fence into our hen-yard and had massacred the hens.

Throughout my "career" as a witch, I would intermittently dream of flying, of going to great night-reveries, of grand Sabbats held atop hills in ancient stone circles - and sometimes the stars themselves. But mostly, and almost nightly, I would dream of showing up in some far-flung place, where there was inevitably some sort of "bad juju" going on.

In these "dreams" I would do what I could to fix it. Usually resorting to pulling out my ritual dagger, and claiming the ground there - and sometimes pissing to the four directions. Never underestimate the usefulness of marking your territory. Sometimes I would dream of other witches and pagans I knew, and we'd be cooperating to do serious workings that needed doing, and sometimes we'd all remember the event, or similar dream-narratives.

I always knew I was leaving my body in my sleep. But I was always told that this was not true, that you cannot go "out" from the flesh without intent, and that dreams are just dreams. That you're trapped in your own head, that you cannot project outward from inward. And I always thought "Well, that's bullshit. I can do it, and I know I'm not -that- special or unique."

I'd always wake up feeling like I hadn't slept at all, or cold, or sore... or with cuts. And eventually I found an author who didn't shy away from saying "Sometimes people who are different can do different things. Some people with these skills are different from others, and have unique skills themselves, and that includes stepping into someone else's dreams, or another world altogether, while they sleep."

When I finally went "SEE?! I told you I wasn't that special" it got weirder. I didn't have a normal dream (that I could recall) for over two years. Now, I might have "just a dream" once a week. Mostly, though - I journey out and do what needs doing.

Not that long ago, I was in a normal dream - and then it went "weird", that is to say, it shifted from being a dream to being something else. The setting changed and I found myself in a dark room, across from a tall, blond man. He has contracted me, or is seeking to.

"I desire passage to (it's a Norse word, I hear it, but have no idea what it means) and I am told that you have the skills required to cut a door, as it were." His voice is almost lyrical, and heavily Scandinavian, and I know immediately that he is not human.

I recall telling him that I wasn't sure what place he was talking about, because I didn't know the word. He smiled at me, very patiently, and stated that it was Norse and that I should look it up when I wake up. He also explained that it was beyond the 'hedge', and that he simply needed someone to open a door.

As suddenly as it was said, we were there. A land of shadows, muted tones, half-colors, and ever-biting wind. The stars reeled visibly across the sky, as if being fast-forwarded. In fact, everything seemed to be moving so quickly, as to stand still. The man turned to me "I can believe many things, but I cannot believe you just did that. I cannot believe I am actually in (that word again). You hold remarkable skills. Fortunately we can return of our own accord now - you are free to leave." So I did.

When I awoke, I jotted down the word - the place name I didn't understand. "Skardalfhemmer" It was close. The word that had been said to me was actually Svartalfheimer - The land of the Dark Elves. I wonder what business the handsome Scandanavian had there?

With the hour being what it is, I'm off to 'dream'. Maybe I'll get the answer to my question.