Anniversaire

How do you cope with a brush with death?

It's been eight years today since I was in a severe car accident. The consensus of everyone who saw the aftermath is that I should have died- if not on impact, then from internal injuries. The rear axle of my station wagon was driven up through the rear floorboard, which was basically nonexistent from the rear of the car being folded accordion-like against the back of my seat. The metal beam between windshield and driver door had crumpled down on my shoulder. The steering wheel held me in place.

My memories of the event were mercifully nonsensical at first: snippets of chiaroscuro, a voice. They came back, though. The darkness of a tarp being lowered over me to protect me from shards of glass. The soothing drawl of the state trooper speaking through my shattered window. Even the moment before the crash: Breaking Benjamin's "The Diary of Jane" playing over my speakers, the realization that the van behind me wasn't stopping, a struggle to shift into gear and pull off the road, the voice of my first chiropractor in my head saying that the worst thing about a car accident was the reflex to tense up.

I guess my deliberate loosening up helped prevent more serious injuries. I sang Iron Maiden on the stretcher. "Caught Somewhere in Time." I don't remember being placed in the helicopter. I know they cut my clothes off to look for injuries. In my dazed state days later, I mourned the loss of my favorite bra and brand new BDUs. My beloved Aunt Moose sat with me in the ER. I remember her voice. I remember snippets of my parents talking to me in the room that night.

I had a severe TBI and soft tissue damage. The trauma is probably what triggered my RA and definitely my fibro. There was a cut on the back of my left leg so deep that it left a divet. A similar hollow still exists on my right thigh where my steering wheel dug in so deep. The backs of my calves are still discolored. The damaged tissue feels crystallized beneath my skin. After the RA issues began, some of the tissue grew nodules. My back has never been quite the same.

People who have seen the car or pictures of it call this a miracle. I call it the worst thing that ever happened to me. It feels like I came to in an alternate universe. When I discovered the shamanic concept of soul loss, it made perfect sense. Some piece of me is gone now, not lost so much as dead.

After the worst effects of the TBI were gone, I learned a lot about myself. I guess being that close to death has that effect on one. It certainly got me over my thanatophobia. Arguably it made me morbid; I don't think that's such a terrible thing. Death is just another part of life.

Sometimes I miss the profound darkness I woke up from. Is lack of consciousness anything like death? If so, it isn't so bad. It's quiet and warm and black as a windowless room, a quilt pulled up over the head. I don't miss the haze of memory. My own mind was jagged as the shards of my windshield for months. Was it worth coming to? I go back and forth on my answer. Life has its pros and cons. I don't know if surviving was my choice or not, but here I am.

I have no time or energy for the trivialities of life anymore. The harder I aim for pre-accident normality, the harder it is for me to function. Normal is as dead as the girl in that little Subaru. They pulled a wild, mad woman out of the wreckage. I am the jagged edges of sawed-open metal and the softness of that black sleep.

Today I mourn that dumb, sweet girl that I was. I mourn all the lost potential. But I also celebrate the me who emerged from that crushed car.

Happy rebirthday to me.

Fifteen Years

You know what today is.

You may be young enough not to remember it. Or you may, like me, have been a child on the cusp of adolescence, too young to hear or understand certain details but no less horrified. This is the one good thing about traumatic brain injury: my memories of the day of and the weeks following are hazier. But they're still there.

It doesn't matter where I was. What matters is the feeling. All of us, adults or children, were glued to the television. We sifted through photo, video, audio to make sense of our collective shock. I don't know that any of us still fully understand. I don't think we can understand. Grief and fear of that magnitude cannot be broken down into manageable chunks of data. There will always be rough edges and shards.

After my own brush with death, I found myself obsessing over what happened on that day in 2001. What was going through the survivors' minds? Were their memories as fragmented as my own? Did they feel like me, like their souls had fled although their bodies had survived? So I read. I studied. I filled in every gap in my knowledge of the event and learned horrible things along the way.

The human capacity for suffering is astounding. We can inflict such evils on one another. We can survive nearly as much. We are as resilient as we are damaged, a patchwork of strength and frailty. And we fill in the gaps in one another's armor.

Tonight I will do as I have done for the last decade and a half. I will pray for the dead and cry for the living, and then I will push the images from my head as I try to sleep. Our national wound is healed, but scars still ache. Sometimes we have to stop and rub at them for a while to still the pain.

Feeling Better

The cold porcelain experiment was not a total waste. I learned that you can color it quite nicely by scraping watercolor paint into it and mushing it in. Nice marbling effect! Also watercolor paint is the bane of my artistic existence, so it's a good way to get rid of it. And even better, I made handles for the most used of my crochet hooks. Some of them cracked a bit, because obviously I have trouble getting all the bubbles out, but most look pretty good. Just got to let them dry completely and seal them.

And like a good little student of divination, I've been practicing with my lovely Lenormand deck (another blog post on that to come in the near future). The readings have been consistently good. I swear I'm not looking for the best possible interpretation. I go into it neutral and am wary of anything too extreme in either direction. But my first Grand Tableau did show the Gentleman very near the Lady, and after randomly pulling a card last week with no real expectations for anything, I got the Ring. If you aren't familiar with the traditional card readings, use your imagination.

So are things shifting, finally? Trust me, I'm not going to make any split-second decisions, and I will not be assuming that life is suddenly shifting into a meadow of daisies and cupcakes or whatever. I've got the Return of Saturn to look forward to in the next few years, and Mercury is going retrograde next month. Learned the hard way that that's nothing to fuck around with. Cautious optimism, I think, is the way to proceed... but like 49% cautious, 51% optimism. We'll see.

Anyway, wish me luck. Burn a candle for me. Love you all.

Fuck Cold Porcelain

Sometimes I forget just how fucked up my body is, even when I'm doing something with the goal of making things easier for my poor, pitiful asshole of a body.

I've seen Pinterest fails like the rest of you, but cold porcelain, a DIY polymer clay, looked promising. The only reason I was looking at polymer clay is because I need cheap handles for my crochet books. Why? Because maybe if I can grip the damn things, it won't hurt so much to use them. So I gathered my ingredients...

...and now I'm sitting on the couch crying because my stupid fucking hands hurt. I don't like the texture. I only mixed the shit up because I figured it was cheap enough to warrant the work of mixing it up. How absurd it is: I get hurt trying to save money because I hurt too much to hold down a job.

I'm sure some of you are wondering why I didn't just do a quick money spell. Obviously I'm wondering it too now. It's demoralizing, though, to feel like I can't even mix up a simple craft item, and I still don't think of myself as disabled. My brain is a thousand miles ahead of my body.

And now I'm seeing something on the news about a family friend whose body has been missing since spring. There is not enough sage in this fucking world to make me feel less negative.

Shoutout to /r/Witchcraft

Confession time: because I am a bored computer-literate human being, I spend a lot of time on Reddit. 

(That's not a confession, really. I need something juicier. Alright, actual confession: when I raid my grandfather's candy bowl, I leave the Hershey's and go for the Lindt.)

And because I have spent all this time exploring subreddits--and praying that I don't stumble across anything too fucked up--I have found a few oases of calm in the otherwise turbulent seas of teh Interwebz. My favorite is /r/Witchcraft. 

The night before last, I shared a link to my previous post in /r/Witchcraft. I dithered about it for a while. Was it interesting to anyone but me? Would I look desperate for attention? (Which is silly, because I don't think that when someone else posts. But I am not always very nice to myself. Sorry, patronesses.) After a bit of back-and-forth, I said "fuck it" and hit the submit button. 

And BOOM. Awesome shit happened.

The comments were overwhelming. Everyone was so kind and supportive. Other disabled practitioners responded. I've been able to converse with people from around the world (and surprisingly close to me). 

So thank you, /r/Witchcraft, for making me see that I'm not alone in this. You guys are a trove of wisdom and inspiration. You are my tribe. Bless you all.

Ableism, Mundane and Magical

Sometimes I feel like every man I've been interested in either doesn't feel the same way, and the few with whom there's mutual attraction have no idea how to start or continue a conversation. Needless to say, this is frustrating as fuck.

Look, I know I'm not the easiest person to be involved with. I'm opinionated and moody. I have health problems on top of that. Believe me, I did not plan on being disabled at 23, but I also did not expect that I'd be single at 26. (That happens when you're raised thinking that being married is the ultimate goal of your life.) I know my imperfections intimately because I'm a perfectionist and I obsess over them. But I'm a good person. I'm loyal to a fault, loving, and intelligent. I make a mean focaccia, too. 

It's hard not to get down on myself when someone who seemed like a nice guy just stopped talking to me when I said I was disabled. I understand immediately cutting off a conversation, but only for situations where someone's being creepy or offensive. If I had said something like, "I have a crippling addiction to heroin" or "I only get off to crushing testicles underfoot," I would understand him disappearing into the cyber-ether. But being honest about disability and the unemployment it entails? If he had said, "That's a dealbreaker" I would be disappointed, but it's so much worse to think that he doesn't even think I deserve a response, all because of chronic illnesses I can't control.

So yes, I'm hurt. I'm used to having people treat me like my illnesses are a character flaw or hypochondria. It sucks when it's strangers. It's worse when it's family. And sometimes--and this may be the worst--ableist logic even permeates witchcraft. 

Yes, magic takes energy. But to imply that a sick witch can't cast a spell without fucking up is ridiculous. I am sick every day of my life. I live in a constant fog of pain, but if I bind a spell properly, it works. To say that I am incapable of magic is just another form of discrimination. 

If you are chronically ill, it's okay to feel upset when you read some bullshit about not practicing when you're sick. Get mad and use that power, if you must. Sometimes you can't control what happens to your body, but your mind and spirit and all the energies at work in this world are yours to command. Your illness is sacred. It teaches you compassion. Never let someone else's prejudice impede your practice.

Feel your feelings, my friends, but do not give in to the lie that you are anything less than a powerful, beautiful spirit capable of creating magic.

Witches Get Stitches

Arianrhod is probably my favorite goddess. I've always had an affinity for the moon, and I have a soft spot for anyone who's been screwed by patriarchy. But you know what else makes me so fond of her? She spins and weaves the threads of fate. Grandmother Spider, another weaver, also has a place of honor in my personal pantheon. I worship the deities of my ancestors unless another one specifically comes to me. Athena is in that category.

These three are just a few of the goddesses who weave and spin. Consider the ancient Greeks' Moirae (Fates), Egypt's Neith, Hinduism's Maya... I could go on, but my hands hurt so I'm keeping this brief. All these cultures throughout history have goddesses who excel in textile arts. Hell, even Tolkien's Varda (also called Elbereth) sewed the night sky. Why is this archetype so firmly embedded in our consciousness?

Perhaps one reason is the importance of fabric. It's safe to say that without textiles, human civilization would not exist. For one thing, we don't have fur. In colder climates, clothes are necessary for survival. In hotter climates, they protect against the sun. Even if you never wear a stitch of clothing in your lifetime, you're probably going to need a blanket or a tent or a bag. After a certain point in our evolution, textiles became an absolute necessity. I'm not knocking naturalism (nudism) by any means--though I'm too much of a fashionista to go naked--but imagine a life without any type of fabric except animal furs or leather. It worked for our ancestors once they came out of the trees and started losing hair, but now? No way.

But there's magic in the mundane, and even something as practical as fabric can be mystical. So many connections are made between threads or tapestries and fate in mythology. Fiber arts allow for ultimate control over the finished product. I have dabbled in most of them. I spin yarn from newspaper and plastic bags. I sew by machine and by hand. I crochet (badly). And if I ever get a loom, I will weave, because I loved it when I tried it in school. The best part is knowing that I can make something I have imagined come into being. That is the art of creation. It connects me to all of these goddesses. And isn't the whole point of magic to create your own fate, to make your own world?

Working with fabric can be an extremely powerful form of magic. Each stitch holds intention. Each thread ties you closer to the divine. The next time you need to connect to any of the aforementioned goddesses, try a little sewing project. It can be as simple as sewing on a button or making an Ojo de Dios, or as elaborate as taking up point lace just to make an altar cloth (which I may or may not have attempted). All that matters is that you know that you can manipulate the threads of Fate.

Painting Your Hermit Crab Shell When Your Claws Hurt

On both of the last two sabbats, I have felt too bad to do any sort of proper ritual. With chronic illness(es), it's a given that you're going to miss out on things. But religious observances? The fun ones, especially? It blows.

I have crippling impostor syndrome about everything. I guess that's to be expected; I spent a decade being gaslighted on a daily basis and didn't really learn to recognize it until years later, so I'm used to doubting everything about myself and my experience. Being diagnosed with my various ailments has only made it worse. It's pretty obvious based on my blood tests and my own physical symptoms that I'm really sick, but for some reason the first thing people say when they find out is that I'd be less sick if I was more positive about it. I have one disease that will shorten my lifespan and almost certainly be the cause of my death, barring accidents, and another that is usually not fatal but could just as easily kill me tomorrow. That's not being negative. It's being aware that I need to spend however much time I have as wisely as possible.

It's my body. It's my life. So why, why do healthy dickheads' comments about how I need to cope with my health make me feel like I'm the crazy one? It awakens that slumbering beast of self-doubt, which I have never been able to kill entirely. And when I convince myself that I am just crazy and try to function like a normal person my age, I end up hurting myself really badly.

My goddesses don't like it when that happens. I've been getting a lot of directives to take as much care of myself as possible, and that includes resting when I'm tired and avoiding activities that cause me to feel worse. At least one, and I'm 90% sure I know who though She hasn't explicitly introduced Herself, really pushes pampering. I think that by encouraging me to treat myself to little things like DIY masks and a spritz of good perfume on not-so-special occasions, She is training me to view my body as sacred, and bless Her, I was so far behind that She had to start with the basics.

The self-doubt feeds a really vicious cycle of perfectionism, which too often ends in total paralysis. Going easy on myself is another of my directives. When I get frustrated over my imperfect body or an incomplete to-do list, I feel a serene presence beside me. I hear a soft voice in my head, not my own, whispering that it's okay. I am not my body or my to-do list. I am not chronic illness. I am an embodied spirit and a bright mind. I may live in a shell that grows more cumbersome and cramped over time, but this shell is a part of the natural world, and I should respect it as much as I would a tree or a river. And because my hermit crab soul will grow too big and have to move to another shell someday, I should love this one while it houses me.

I have decided, at least temporarily, that I will observe the sabbats not as a single day, but as a period of time: the section of wheel rather than the spoke itself. Until Mabon, I'll be celebrating Lammas every day, even if it's just taking a moment in my heart to thank the Earth for the first harvest. Maybe this will be a way to more fully experience the Wheel of the Year, to actively participate in each moment of the natural world rather than stopping eight days a year to fixate on it. (Not that that's what everyone else does. Most folks have fuller schedules than I do, though.)

Well, the shell needs a shower. Friends, don't let the ignorance of others cause you to hurt yourselves. Listen to yourself and your deities of choice.

Building a Better Book of Shadows

When I first started getting interested in magic and neopaganism, I did a decent job of keeping journals about my own experience, but I didn't write down the things I was learning from other sources. I read voraciously, and I drew on my own knowledge of local folklore. I just didn't take notes. Part of it was the fear of it being discovered. I think I was also worried about committing to it without a reasonable amount of study. I wanted to know what was out there before I made up my mind.

For me, longhand writing has a different power than typing. Sure, I put my blood, sweat, and tears into typed work. But writing is serious. I have to commit to using up paper and ink, to choose my words carefully, to move my hand and arm (which is fucking hard with my health issues). The level of involvement with the text is so much higher. That's why I purposely avoid handwriting text that I'm going to edit heavily: I don't want early drafts to survive.

A Book of Shadows isn't usually edited, but it does evolve over time, and organization can be an issue, so of course keeping it digital is a great choice. But I have to do things the hard way. So instead of doing the reasonable thing, I determined to write out everything I want to include in my BOS by hand and organize it in a binder, with the goal of recopying it in a suitably pretty blank book down the road.

Yeah, magic doesn't fix bullheadedness.

Why the effort? you're probably asking. Believe me, I've asked myself the same damn thing for months now. The simple answer is that my words are how I manifest magic in my life. Whether I type them or speak them they have power, but to write them out by hand gives them a soul. If I suffer (or just have more pain than usual) for my art, that gives it that much more oomph. It shows just how serious I am about what I do.

So yes, I may be making a very impractical choice, but I honestly feel that it is the best choice for me. However you go about keeping a Book of Shadows, or whether you keep one at all, is up to you. What matters is that you put your heart into what you're doing.

The Scent of a Witchy Woman

Think about which of your senses you use most. Maybe you're a visual person. Or maybe you're like me and you focus on sounds more than sights. And of course touch is a huge source of information for our brains to process.

Unlike sight, hearing, touch, and taste, smell is subtle. If you're breathing through your nose, you're smelling something. Thing is, you don't always consciously think about what you're smelling, but even then, smell is having a subconscious effect on your mood. This subtlety makes scent a neat component to use in workings.

I'm not saying that you can't do magic without incense or candles or oils. Not even close. But I will say that not having control over the scent of your work area makes it very hard to focus. If you don't believe me, try working in a small room with a gassy dog.

I've found that meditating on a perfume and charging it with the trait I want it to enhance is a simple but powerful way to put a little magic in my day. For example, I have one perfume that reminds me of a wedding bouquet. I charged it with thoughts of sweetness and serenity. I use it for family gatherings and any time someone needs comfort or encouragement.

In theory, it'd be stronger if I mixed the scents myself, but I much prefer to let designers do the work for me. Good perfume isn't just a few scents splashed together. That shit is complicated. Rollerball containers are the way to go: a dab'll do you, so even though they're small, you're getting enough to last you for a while, especially if you aren't wearing it every day. And honestly, don't worry about traditional correspondences. What matters is what emotions and associations the scent has for you.

So go forth and let your nose add some magic to your life.

Friendly Neighborhood Murder

My spirit animal is, without doubt, the crow.

That sounds so faux hippie: spirit animal. But "totem" makes me think of totem poles, which are cool but so far removed from my experience that I feel weird using the word. "Spirit" fills the abandoned barns of my world, thick as the humidity, stubborn as kudzu.

Crows aren't very popular. They can be regarded as a bad omen. Their cawing isn't very pleasant. And on a more practical note, they will tear up a garden. All the farmers around here hate them.

Our produce has been safe from crows, even though there's a murder of seven who live here. I see them pestering hawks in flight over the fields. They congregate outside my bedroom window, six on the ground and one standing guard in a dead pine tree. I love to watch them hop and strut, feathers shining in the sun. I listen to their calls and pay attention to the meanings.

I didn't choose them myself. The crows chose me. At 22, I began to dream of them. One morning a murder of at least twenty roosted on the roof of a building I was walking past. As I grew closer, they began to caw. When I was on the sidewalk beside them, they all began to carry on. It was so loud. As I walked further away, they grew quiet. At first I thought they were angry, afraid that I was a threat, but as I learned their calls, I realized that they were greeting me. I've heard the same lazy squawk each time a member of my local murder lands next to another.

As a witch, it's important to be able to get to the truth without popular opinion clouding my judgment. Crows have a shitty reputation, but the more I study them, the more I see just how incredible they are. Crows are intelligent. Their language is complex. They have impressive problem-solving skills. The fact that they are smart enough to trick other creatures causes them to be labeled as cunning, which has a negative connotation. To me, this cunning is creative survival. The crow works with what it has.

If you have crows near you, take some time to observe their behavior. Even if you don't have a connection to them, you can learn to interpret their calls. Let them alert you to changes in the environment. Their watchfulness can benefit you as much as the rest of the murder. Also, let the crow inspire you to try unconventional methods of problem solving.

Blessed be!

The Black Side of Gray

I don't buy into the all positivity, all the time hype. Yeah, positive thinking is great, but it's unrealistic. Besides, I wasted two decades of my life trying to banish all negative thoughts and actions, and my life kind of sucked, so now I'm doing things the gray way. Love and ultimate good is still my aim. That said, sometimes folks deserve instant karma. When protection spells for myself or my loved ones aren't enough, a lesson needs to be taught.

What about the Threefold Law? you ask. Well, let's just say I never specified that I'm Wiccan. Honestly, I don't want to go medieval on anyone's ass, but this has been a long time coming. Even the kindest people have breaking points. Christ himself went on a table-flipping rampage. And we all know I'm not particularly Christlike in spite of all the effort I put in.

Still, I'm not going to completely destroy someone's life. I know people who deserve it, but they're (hopefully) not a threat anymore. Right now I just need something along the lines of... hell, I don't know. What's the protocol for verbal and emotional abuse? It's bad, but I found physical and sexual abuse plus the former two to be much worse. So how do I treat someone who's only doing half as bad, but still bad enough to really fuck up my life?

The other issue here is keeping it quiet. I would love nothing more than to get my hex on with all the drama of a Hollywood movie, but when you live with the person causing all the trouble and they don't necessarily know that you practice, it's kind of stupid to make lights flicker and sacrifice a chicken.

I know that the practitioner's will is the most powerful part of a spell, and that if you put enough effort and energy into your work, you don't necessarily need to worry about the moon phase or how many ounces of x herb to grind. That said, I like having some tools to focus my mind. Sigils are kind of my go-to thing right now. The creative energy charges them, and if you carve them on a candle or burn the paper you drew them on, there are no traces left. If I combine this with offerings to and an invocation of a goddess who protects and/or avenges women, I'm thinking that might pack the extra punch I need. And of course I'm going to bind it. I don't know why returning the favor to someone who's victimizing me would ever need to come back to haunt me, and I'm pretty sure the consequences are worth it at this point, but I still need to make sure it only affects the individual.

Any thoughts or recommendations? I know magic is a last resort, but believe me, I'm out of other options.

Muggle Dating is Hard!

It's easy to see why Secrecy is included in the Witch's Pyramid. Practitioners of magic have not always been very popular among their peers. Hell, persecution is still a problem around the world. Thus most witches keep mum about their, shall we say, extracurricular activities in muggle company.

This is becoming a problem for me.

I have been trying to find a magic-friendly fellow to date. Okay, not necessarily to date--I'm a hopeless romantic, so finding someone to stay with the rest of my life, or at least a significant part of it, is pretty high on my priorities list. And because I am both insistent on open communication and horrible at lying, I cannot start seeing someone who isn't at least magic-friendly. I can come right out and say I'm Pagan, at this point. But a witch?  Goddess have mercy on me if I say that to the wrong person!

In my corner of the world, magic is pretty actively discouraged by a significant portion of the community. How's a witch to find a nice, Pagan guy in a place where they're all so deep in the broom closet one can't find them? Spells haven't been able to draw them out yet, but based on the inbox of the Internet dating service I'm using and the blatant staring on the streets, Aphrodite has been listening to at least part of my petition. (Thanks, Aphrodite!) And no, I haven't been harming others. No mind control in my magic! But apparently I need to be a little more specific.

I suppose I just have to keep my head down, keep reworking my spells, and go about my business as usual. It's not like I don't have plenty of other shit to deal with in the meantime. But hopefully I'm getting closer to my goal of meeting a great partner, and until then, I'll just have to find clever ways to gauge a potential match's opinions on magic without giving myself away.

The Reason for the Sneezin'

I love spring. Really, I do. The trees come back to life overnight. Flowers blossom everywhere: in yards, in fields, in the cracks in the pavement. Frogs croak all night and birds sing all day. It's cool enough to be refreshing, warm enough to be soothing, and the wind bears the scent of honeysuckle. All of nature is celebrating Ostara and the Spring itself...

...by fucking.

The baby bunnies darting across the yard are the product of rabbits, who are known for--what else?--screwing like rabbits. The chicks at the store hatched from an egg, that ancient fertility symbol that is found in every nest, coop, and birdhouse this time of year. And that golden powder dusting the hearts of flowers (and your car)? Pollen, which is basically plant sperm. 

It's hard to worship nature when nature is basically blowing its load on you. 

You'd think I'd be having Shitty Pagan Syndrome again, worrying that I'm failing by not toughing out my allergies and communing with nature. Surprisingly, no. I can tolerate low pollen levels, but when all the world seems to be reproducing at the same time, I feel completely justified in staying inside and popping benadryl like M&Ms. I do venture out, though. Pretty flowers sometimes overcome my dislike of breathing plant sperm. 

Enjoy this season of renewal and rebirth. Just don't cast when you're in an antihistamine-induced haze.

Flower Pic-ing

Probably half of my phone's memory is filled with variations of my hand holding a flower in place while I snap a picture of it. I like to identify wild plants, especially flowers. How could I not? They're the epitome of the Divine Feminine as expressed in nature. After a decade and a half of hypermasculine Christianity with a fondness for giant new buildings, I need the sacred wildness of Mother Earth. So I store up pictures as references and learn what I can.

To the right is an Asiatic Dayflower I found while walking on the edge of the woods near me. It's said to bloom only one day out of the year. That may or may not be the case. What I can say about it for sure is that it's a member of the pea family. And sure enough, it has little legumes in pods that look like the seeds inside of a green bean,

They're edible, apparently, but I don't know of any medicinal or magical uses. When I found them last year, I pressed a few and offered the rest to the Goddess on my altar. (At that point, I didn't really have a patroness, so they were for the Earth Mother in all her aspects.)

This here on the left is a Muscari, or Grape Hyacinth. I used to think they were ugly until I heard someone compare them to Faberge's work. Sure enough, they are gorgeous up close. Do you see the little white edging on the fully-opened bell in the center? It looks like crochet lace.

Again, no idea of any medicinal or magical uses. I will point out, though, that Hyacinth was the curly-haired youth loved by Apollo, and thus the hyacinth is sacred to him. I don't know if the Grape Hyacinth is included, but I imagine that using these to honor Apollo would probably not hurt his feelings.

They're also a great decoration for an Ostara altar. If you find them growing wild, as I did, you can dig up the bulbs and transplant them to your garden. Just give them extra TLC so they aren't shocked beyond recovery.



And the little white bloom here is... something. It almost looks like a wild violet, but the way the petals behaved looked more like the Asiatic dayflower. It nestled in the grass like the niphredil of Lothlorien. While I was sitting down after getting tired out, I noticed this one beside me and picked it to get more familiar with it.

So what is this flower? I'm sure I'll sit down and do the research sooner or later, but I think that particular blossom had a much simpler purpose: to add a little beauty to a moment when I wasn't feeling very well. Sometimes a tincture or a salve or a spell isn't what you need. Sometimes you just need to sit a minute with the Divine and reawaken what's divine in you.

Grim-whaaaa?

Some people remember everything they hear. Some of us need a little extra help, so we write everything down. And a decent chunk of humanity has been that way at least since the early modern period, when culture shifted from being primarily aural. Grimoires are the result of magic practitioners not being able to remember shit without writing it down. Plus it sounds so metal.

(Am I the only one who hears "grimoire" and thinks of Guitar Grimoire? Yes? Moving on.)

Historical grimoires are available online. I've skimmed the contents, but honestly, they're not my cup of tea. Using someone else's sigils seems like a copout, especially when creating my own will have that much more of my energy put into it. Also, a number of them are based on Christian demonology. I'd rather not summon malevolent entities. Even if you don't believe in demons from a Christian point of view, calling up negative shit is, to me, asking to have something go wrong. No thank you. I spent more than enough time in Sunday School worrying about demons without inviting them into my house.

A lot of Wiccans recommend keeping a Book of Shadows, which is like a grimoire and journal combined. (Awesome for those of us who wouldn't remember our heads if they weren't attached!) Magic and mundane are more connected than we realize, I think, so it makes sense to have not only the spells and rituals but notes about the experience of conducting them. Especially if something backfires: you'd better be able to trace it back to the source so you can avoid fucking up again.

What makes the Book of Shadows vastly preferable to a grimoire is the fact that it's personalized. Yes, it's important to learn from other people's successes and failures, but why copy a stranger's rituals? As a beginner, it's fine, but I think that as you learn and grow as a witch, you really ought to be able to hammer out your own. And based on the Kindle Store's selection of books on earth-based religion, the spells I want to perform are not what most folks are interested in. Love? Pshaw. I just want to learn how not to kill every herb I try to grow. Yes, it's bad enough that I need magical intervention.

At the end of the day, I suppose the Book of Shadows is just the postmodern version of the grimoire, a natural progression as society has become more individualistic. If anyone has actually been successful working with a grimoire, though, especially 17th century or earlier, I'd like to hear more about it. Does it feel like you're traveling back in time, as I imagine it would? And does anyone use their Book of Shadows as a work-in-progress type thing, like a lab notebook for rituals, or do you just wait to get something down pat before you add it? That sounds like a dumb question, but I'm really curious, because based on what I've read it could go either way.

Small Towns and Syncretism

A year and a day is the standard for exploring most pagan paths, it seems. Standard usually equates to boring for me, and I'm a chronic overthinker, so I spent well over a year in study before even thinking about converting. (Not gonna lie, most of that year was spent seriously weighing the odds, just in case the Hell I grew up hearing about was real.) Then there was the year and a half of very private practice AND study. And then there was last weekend, when in the middle of a political discussion, I said to my mother, "I'm pagan, by the way, and tomorrow is our Easter."

Well, okay, nature worship is all well and good. She's as fond of cute chicks and bunnies as the rest of us, pagan fertility symbols or not.

Tonight, though, I mentioned the name of this blog. She wrinkled her nose up a little at first. "Witch" is a more controversial word than "bitch", in a lot of ways... especially in a small town. I went into the lecture about ethics that I've had ready for months now. Let's keep it simple: right-hand path, white, fluffy. If I stray into gray, that's between me and the Goddess.

Goddess... another loaded word. Especially in a predominantly Southern Baptist town where the women marry right after high school and instantly pop our babies--or vice versa. The country club hosts largely ineffective abstinence balls. The men over sixty are either Masons or Klansmen. Publicly supporting a democratic candidate around here is a great way to get shunned. Now imagine being out as a pagan and a witch. They're not synonymous, but that doesn't matter in this area: either way you're asking for a burning cross in your front yard.

Because I actually do revere Jesus, I've made up my mind to participate in any Easter celebration my family has. I feel like a shitty pagan for it, like I should have spent last weekend gardening naked instead of having a quiet Ostara ritual and planning for Easter with the family. It's some comfort knowing that my ancestors basically did the same thing. Syncretism works for a lot of people, but when it's mostly coming out of fear (Jesus was a teacher and prophet, not a god!!!), it sucks ass. I just wonder how many people around the world are inwardly cringing at the thought of lying their way through a sunrise service.

I'm sure that someday I'll be out more or less entirely, simply because I have a big mouth. Right now, though, I'm genuinely worried. Look at the presidential race. If a certain side wins, the country's going to be a lot like Germany in 1939, and we all know how that went for minorities. And martyrdom is just... so unappealing. I certainly wouldn't fault someone else for hiding their religion from people who might hurt them for it, but when I do it, it feels gross. Conformity disgusts me, at least in myself. (Sometimes in others, too, to be honest. Like, damn, why does everybody have to wear all the same shit?)

Maybe Easter candy will reconcile me to my apparent fate as a shitty pagan. I'm used to being a shitty Christian; fundamentalists used to love to inform me of that. For now I will secretly light incense to my patronesses and eat ham with the family to celebrate Jesus.

Wait a minute, that's messed up.