The 4th Abysmal Witch episode of Pennies in the Well is now up. In it I share one of my personal workings, in this case, my personal altar. Since visual aids are helpful:
If you want to know more about it, you’ll need to listen to the podcast. 🙂
Saturn.
Note: this post is NOT to elicit sympathy, concern or expressions of support (no, seriously, I appreciate any such thought but really don’t want or need to hear it). I’m sharing because some days are bad days and there is something to be learned in them.
And yes, today is a bad day. My stupid freakin back is acting up enough for me to be incapable of ignoring it or pretending its just a blip. While I have held to a general state of calm and positive thinking, somedays fear surges up and all the horrible possibilities start doing a whirly twirly dance around me. Bad days are really good for letting the fear in (the fear in this case residing in how long will this injury last, will it outlast the really good medical leave at work, will I ever get back to normal, etc.).
What’s interesting is that sadness also leaks out on days like this. Is it just anger twisted inwards? Fear turned sideways? Or is it true sadness?
I honestly don’t know. It’s just a sea of heart-break, waves slipping long and deep across my inner sands. It wells up and subsides in a rhythm only it knows.
I don’t know what’s being released through this. I can only accept it as part of myself that needs its own acknowledgement, its own space, its own share of my attention.
And what I’ve found in the past is that when deep sadness or pain is lurking just below consciousness, one of the best ways for me to finish drawing it to the surface and release it is to watch an emotionally intense movie. There are some guarantee to make me cry scenes here and there, but let’s face it, you want a movie to wring you out, why not go with What Dreams May Come? After all, almost everyone is dead within the first ten minutes and the remainder die by the end anyways 😀
We’ll see what else may come tonight. Okay, anyone else think that sounded dirty?
~Abysmal Witch
Our rite this night began with the “Rite of Her Sacred Fires”, a celebration and invocation of Hekate that can be done by anyone and really at any time, though people are asked to do it across this waxing moon to share in a global group experience.
Our circle casting was simple and efficient (with that much practice, its not too surprising!) though in it I used the red drum I made with Nikiah of Red Moon Musings. Its voice has deepened and reaches far on our behalf.
And then we worked with our Ancestors, in particular our spiritual ancestors. While I cannot speak of the ritual and our experience, I will say that it was an honour, periodically fun, and has left me glowing with the love of a night well spent.
Let as many as can release their fears, become All, become None, become One and thus find our Selves.
~the Abysmal Witch
This Beltaine my covenmate and I hightailed it, okay we ambled casually, over to Queen E park in Vancouver.
A beautiful place and highly welcoming. The nature wights of the place were actually a bit confused as to why we’d bother to ask permission to do ritual there. Don’t get me wrong, they appreciated the courtesy, but they’re so welcoming they just never worry about such things.
And yes, spring flowers were certainly the bloom of the day. The number of hyacinths was remarkable, sending an intense wave of sweet scent over the whole park. I love getting up close and personal with flowers, I’m guessing that’s obvious by my picture style. In one case I got so close I was inside the flower:
Being Vancouver there were the odd markers of recent rain:
Now it wasn’t all flowers, all the time. There were plenty of trees for us to commune with. Many tall, straight and fair. And some of them curlier than…well, the phrase that comes to mind is a bit rude and gives also the wrong impression so without further ado, one of the curly trees.
After touring the grounds and doing our magical thing, we headed into the Bloedel Conservatory which is in the middle of the park. There was talk about closing it last year as part of a series of budget cuts, but so far it’s still there. Inside there was another stream, a lot of tropical plants and trees, well labeled actually which was lovely, a display by the local orchid society and a selection of tropical birds.
There was some truly remarkable orchids, but I think my favourite were these ones. First because of the colour and second because they made me think of two high society ladies discussing passerbys.
As we were heading towards the door we were greeted by yet another bird, this one who was kind enough to let me take his picture while he kept his eye on us. Right up until the little kid came wandering up and then he was out of there!
And that, my dear lovelies, was the end of our ritual day. From there it was lunch, a little metaphysical book (mostly window) shopping, and then a lacsidaisical drive home through the gorgeous sunshine.
Happy May Day to all! And to all a great night.
Okay, so a couple of days I got a tad tipsy, saw an ad that was for some high ticket item. It was definitely a Christmas ad, but it was promoting that we buy the item for ourselves, not for others. This led to something of a rant.
I’ve hopefully cleaned it up enough that you can garner some smidge of a booze-addled insight from my rantings. Feel free to correct me.
(Of course, it’s always possible that the commentary is also completely obvious, but letting it out made me feel good.)
Christmas ads are apparently now about getting stuff for yourself, before christmas. Giving license to all of us to be self-interested at this time of year. Oh yeah, don’t forget to get something for the people you care about, but don’t you also care about yourself? If you did, you would buy that fabulously priced 60″ lcd tv now to save yourself stress and money. Waiting for Boxing Day and using only those funds left after christmas that you can afford? That’s just silly talk.
We’re saying it’s okay to put yourself first.
Do you remember when Christmas was about giving to other people and yes, also about getting, but it was about what other people gave you. It wasn’t about what you could get for yourself. When did it stop being a social, community, all about each other event and become all about the Me?
The Me? What’s that? You know, the individual, the I I I me me me that wants to come first. Like when we were five and didn’t really get why we had to share our toys. Mine first, you can have it later if I decide to give it to you. All about me.
And here we are, 17 days to Christmas and the ads are telling us to go out and buy this cool ‘x’ for ourselves.
Commercialism is clearly driving our society. It is the driver of the chariot of our social opinions. It gets money by getting us to spend. We’re letting it tell us that it’s time to let go of the spiritual meanings in our lives in pursuit of getting the next cool thing.
It makes me ill. It’s hard enough holding onto, finding, and/or drinking in our spiritual experiences. It’s just that much harder when we are being slapped at every turn with instructions on how to be a more selfish, self-interested, self-involved individual.
Show your love this season by showing that you care. Which does not mean buying the biggest thing you possible can….for yourself.
Okay, I admit, I should stop watching tv again.
Happy holidays!
This post is inspired by Cat Yronwode‘s interview over at New World Witchery podcast, episode 14. Followed by personal epiphany.
She spoke of how she firmly believes that anyone wanting to practice hoodoo needs to get involved with the culture it was born from (paraphrased), i.e. go and talk with some black people who have it in the family. That it isn’t enough to read some books and do what they tell you to do. If you want to really get into practicing it, you need to understand and *connect* with the culture(s) that birthed it.
Allrighty, stage set, would you like to know my epiphany?
First, I need to explain about ‘keys’. Or more particularly ‘keys to a tradition’. This is something I’m familiar with in the context of wicca. And is also very applicable and probably described similarly in Free Masonry and other hierarchical occult orders. Essentially, by training with a particular group, you are taught the keys to accessing the group’s egregore (group mind) as well as their accumulated knowledge and trained experience dealing with the non-physical.
Hmmm, to back this up slightly farther. When a group of people work together over an extended period of time, a group mind, or egregore, form. This group mind is a gestalt of the people and is therefore made up of them and also something more. A group that exists over decades or centuries builds up this group mind from everyone who has passed through it but also from everything that group has done together magically.
This accumulates a lot of energy and power.
But access to this energy is limited to those within the group. The people in the group have keys, ritual methodology, symbols, sigils, invocations, etc. that are specific to the group. Having the knowledge of these keys and the proper way to use them allows a member to access this group energy.
The engregore also includes (this part is only my opinion, so far as I’m aware) the experiences the group has had while within the group mind. In other words, if the group has frequently done invocations to Bast, the egregore of the group would have specific connections to Bast that are stronger than other groups and a member, even a relatively new member once they have the keys, would have a closer to relationship to Bast than someone else at the same level of training but in a different group.
So my epiphany was realizing that the cultural involvement or sensitivity that Cat Yronwode was describing, this need for a strong practitioner to really be involved with, understand, connect and resonate with the cultures that birthed Hoodoo was also a description on how someone can get the magical keys to the Hoodoo tradition.
There is no lodge to go and train with. No book written down (yes, there are spell books and Hoodoo books, but they are not the same as the grimoire passed on from master to student which would also include the verbal instructions that go with it) to steal the keys from.
In my personal and perhaps random opinion, the importance she placed on steeping oneself in the culture is actually one of the keys. Another way to put it is that the art of Hoodoo is culturally derived and therefore those pieces of culture are at least some of the keys that allow you to access it.
And if you can’t work with the keys to an egregore, you will never be able to access the full strength of the tradition.
Or your access to that style of magical craft will be hampered compared to someone who can embrace more of the direct keys.
Now personally I also see Hoodoo, from her description, as having been born from repeated meldings of different cultures, and each meeting place birthed new evolutions of spells and methodologies. I believe that as a living tradition, as it encounters other magical practices and other new cultures it will continue to evolve. So even if you are not comfortable in say working with Jesus Christ, you can still work with Hoodoo. However, you will be cut off from that particular key to the tradition and may want to find or create a different key that will work better for you (though please note, new keys typically take time to build up their strength).
But that starts getting into some serious nitty gritty which I won’t be going into today. Or possibly ever on the blog. One never knows.
~The Abysmal Witch
She has seen many things and the passage of time is so familiar as to have lost meaning to her. She is old, she is glorious. Every few years a branch breaks off but always there are more growing. Perhaps one day age will win over growth and she will pass fully into the land of the dead, but until then she remains, Grandma Willow.
I have circled beneath her branches, made magic around her trunk, as have many before me, of varied traditions. None of that mattered to Grandma. She welcomes all as she will. Many have drank beneath her, have been raucous, have been silent, have done drugs and drunk and stayed sober. Have fed animals from her branches, have dangled feet over the ledge of her massive arms.
The squirrels dart along her branches, the birds sing in her leaves, and all the while she rests, growing and dying, and breathing, always breathing as we move on, and she remains.
All is quiet, the silence profound and inwardly sweeping. Searching for the unkown, the question still not fully formed, and the stones are laid out before her. Let the answers slip towards being, let Her light guide the way.
Listen not to the inner whispers, listen not to history and wishes, listen only to the silence, open only to the silence. Within that home She waits, listening, hearing in return.
Hand to stone, Her hand, my stone, my hand, Her stone, thresholds blurred, impact, I act, cast and cast again. Whispers to the heart, the head. Thoughts spoken.
I listen. I hear.