Spiritwork – Page 3 – Serendipities

Spirit Relationships for a Defensible Home, Part Two: Inside the House

September 14, 2022
by Alexandra

In my blog on Warding for a Defensible Home, I mentioned that spirit relationships are a layer of my defensibility, and in my last blog, I discussed relationships with spirits who dwell outside my house and property. For this blog, I’ll be focusing on the inside.

The above picture shows part of my hearth shrine, including: my hearth candle, the candle and offering cup for my steward, his spirit house, a nisse plush doll he asked for, a wooden box containing his other treasures, and a few mushroom decorations we’ve given him as gifts over the years.

Inside my house, besides the house itself, there are a number of spirits I consider to be part of my household, several of whom also assist in home defense. These spirits travel with me when I move, for the most part, and they’re connected to me (or to other human members of my household) more than to the place. In your house, you might also think about including any benign spirit residents or hauntings, if you have them, but the place I live now was uninhabited in that sense when we moved in.

My personal preference when it comes to spirits inside my house is to have a thriving ecosystem, not a barren void. I find that having a number of spirits around reduces the number of interlopers I get, as the space is already inhabited and busy. Plus, when unwanted guests do show up, I don’t have to rely on only my own awareness to sense them — I have help from the spirit members of my hosuehold, who can get my attention much more easily. I do get a fair number of unexpected guests who are willing to follow the house rules and play nicely, or to wait patiently for my attention in my office, and I think it helps that there are enforcers already here to keep them in line.

Some people might not want any additional residents or household spirits, or they might not feel equipped to handle them, and that’s fine, they aren’t necessary. But if you’re a reasonably advanced enough spiritworker to handle having spirit members of your household, and you’re interested in having spirit roommates who can help with making your home more defensible, I recommend having at least two: one to function as a steward and make sure the household is running smoothly and any problems with wards/etc are coming to your attention, and one to function as a guardian to help keep interlopers out, or to kick out any spirit guests who fail to follow the house rules. My household has quite a few at this point, but I have one of each of those, and they’ve both been with me for years. I can’t count the number of times they’ve been helpful, and I really find them to be invaluable.

My house steward is something like a brownie or a nisse, though when I first met him I did specify that I was looking for someone who would not be offended by a bit of clutter (which brownies are known to be, in folklore). Between the small child, and every adult in the household having some kind of disability, there’s just no way my house is ever going to be as clean as a magazine spread, or even as clean as I’d like it to be, and I’ve sort of had to make peace with that. A very finicky spirit would have just been incompatible and a waste of both our time, so I was sure to be specific in what I was after.

The closest this-world analogue to my guardian is probably a leopard, but she’s not an earthly creature (mundane leopards don’t usually glow blue), and she doesn’t have a fixed size, which is very useful in a defender. She doesn’t leave the property, though — she will chase things to the property line (if she doesn’t eat them), and then stay within my wards. Sometimes she’ll be aided by Scotty’s wolf companions, and those will follow things off the property and continue to pursue them (as long as the engagement is within the bounds of our agreements with the local Fair Folk). The leopard is also a spirit I sought out; the wolves are members of a pack to which Scotty’s wolf spirit familiar (for lack of a better word) belongs.

I mentioned in the first blog paying special attention to things like electrical cords and pipes flowing into your home, and we have two spirits who help with the management of those, and also of less physical egresses: mirrors and dreams. The first is a giant spider queen (or so she introduced herself), who, with her numerous children, guards our mirrors, the dreams of the human members of my household, and our internet connections. That last wasn’t something I’d even considered at first, but she offered, and made a pun about guarding webs. We first sought her out when we were having difficulties with nightmare attacks. The second spirit is more like a cluster of spirits, something akin to a siphonophore, a marine creature that’s actually a group of organisms that all have specific functions. They help maintain and protect our electrical and water systems, and in addition to guarding them, also have let me know on several occasions when something is beginning to go wrong with one of those systems. The siphonophore was brought to us by Manannán Mac Lir, when we consulted Him for possible help as we were settling into our current house.

Manannán also brought us two more of our current household spirits: a cleaner shrimp who changes sizes, and a fish similar to a cleaner wrasse (the species of which I haven’t been able to identify). The shrimp assists in removing stagnant energy that is missed or somehow gets stuck even despite my flushing system (which I mentioned in my warding blog). The fish removes small energetic parasites or other flack and detritus from the human members of my household, and sometimes from other people who enter our home, just to keep us from accidentally picking up their hitchhikers. They also both assist me in my healing work on in-person clients. (They aren’t the only ones, but describing that crew would fill another whole blog!)

As I’ve briefly touched on above, the spirits in my household mostly came to me by two means: 1) they were brought by a deity, or 2) I sought out a spirit that would fit a job description. The first method is fairly self explanatory, I think — just ask one of your gods whom you trust for a spirit helper, and verify the spirit when they arrive. The second method, however, is a little more involved, and I’d like to briefly describe my process. (Though if you’re not interested, feel free to stop here!)

My first step to deciding what kind of spirit to invite into the household is to identify the role, niche, or job I/you would like them to fill. Do you want a house guardian that will hunt and eat malevolent entities that come near your house? Do you want a house wight that’s more like a butler, keeping things running smoothly and helping you keep energies clean and tidy? Do you want a familiar, to help you with your craft? Do you have something specific you want to learn, and are you looking for a spirit that can teach you? Once you’ve figured out what general sort of relationship you want, start thinking about what sort of species or type of being you might like best. Be specific in who you’re looking for as you draft your contract!

Another consideration is offerings. Decide what sort of offerings you could provide, and how often, based on your budget. Most spirit companions are given offerings of food — is there anything you wouldn’t be willing to offer? One of my friends is a vegetarian, but she doesn’t mind buying fish, so she had to find a guardian spirit that would be happy with fish over red meat. I typically offer the leopard, wolves, and spider some kind of meat we’ve cooked as part of our own dinner, or raw pieces we set to the side before cooking the rest. My steward gets the first splash of any whole milk or cream, and also baked goods or potatoes or oatmeal. The other three that I mentioned above I light candles for, as they get enough to eat simply doing their jobs. You’ll also have to decide how frequently you’ll make offerings, and include that in your contract proposal.

Once I have an outline for the contract, I usually write it out in the manner of a personal ad:

SEEKING [type of spirit to fill a specific role],
and OFFERING [what you’re willing to provide].

Once it’s written out, I sign it, and then send it out into the universe the way I might any other wish-spell. For me, that usually means a candle spell, but this can be adapted to suit any practice. Then — you wait, and see who answers!

When a spirit shows up, you’ll want to conduct an interview, similar to any human household employee. You’ll need good spirit-sense and discernment: call on your gods and guides to make sure you aren’t being deceived by a malevolent being; use divination to check that you’re understanding the spirit’s answers correctly. If you get multiple who show up, interview all of them, to find the one that seems to fit best. When you’re satisfied that a spirit is a good match, go over any house rules, and really nail down the contract details. Then it’s time for the binding agreement, which works best as a ritual (but again, is adaptable to suit any practice). I find that it’s best to start with a probationary period of about a month before moving on to something more permanent. You can attempt to renegotiate at any time, but it’s better to get the details as right as possible at the beginning! My final step when inviting someone new into the household is to do introductions to the others, if I haven’t already. My steward is usually involved in the interview process, but it’s a good idea for everyone to meet everyone else, and that includes introducing them to the land spirits.

Spirit Relationships for a Defensible Home, Part One: Outside

September 7, 2022
by Alexandra

I said in my last blog that spirit relationships make up another layer of my home defensibility, and they do — both inside and outside my house. I’m working from an animistic perspective here, because that’s what I do and who I am, but I think there might be some helpful kernels even for folks who aren’t starting from that perspective. In the last blog, I mentioned greeting the spirit of the parcel of land, and the spirit of the house itself, and those are the first two spirits I build a relationship with in any new place I live. Those relationships are usually somewhat less “showy” (at least for me) that some of the others I’ll mention in this blog, but they’re the foundation for everything else. If you’re not on good terms with them and well situated in your property, it will be difficult to make your home defensible, no matter what else you do. Also, if you’re not the property owner, you can still form your own relationships with the house and land, and that will help support any wards you place around areas (like a bedroom) that are specifically yours. You can also make relationships with spirits both outside and inside the property, to support your defenses. For the purposes of this blog, I’m just going to cover spirits that are found outside the property, because I originally had started writing out both “outside” and “inside”, but it became a bit too long for one post!

*This is an image from unsplash of Great Falls on the Potomac, which is very similar to an image I took that I almost used – except this one is much higher quality!*

Land spirits, (ie spirits of the land itself, not nature spirits more generally) in my experience, seem to be some sort of nesting dolls, in that you can ask to speak to the spirit of a particular property, and one will show up, and ask to speak to the spirit of a neighborhood, and one that feels slightly different and slightly bigger will show up, and the same (slightly different, slightly bigger) for a town, a region, etc. (However, when we start to approach places the size of the state of Virginia, they get a little too big for me to really pin down borders. I find it easier at that point to attempt to contact the spirit of a particular geographic feature, like “the Appalachian Mountains”, or “the land to the east of the Chesapeake Bay”, rather than relying on my memory of a map of human-drawn borders!) For the purposes of A Defensible Home, the neighborhood or perhaps the town should do you pretty well — this is the larger land spirit that encompasses the land you call home, and it is a good idea to get to know them, and to remain on friendly terms. For me, that usually means being a good “citizen” — picking up trash when I see it, making sure my yard has plants helpful to local insect life, not disturbing local animal life, and the occasional offering of water or something biodegradable that won’t disrupt the local ecosystem (no invasive plants, no foods that will harm wildlife, don’t pour alcohol on plants, etc). When we “talk”, it’s more a mind-brush than a conversation in words, and most often I just ask about the weather! The creatures who live on the land this spirit encompasses live in symbiosis with it — and we should strive to, as well. That also means that all your plant and animal and insect “neighbors” can provide omens, should you need to seek them. I have mapped my local birds to the ogham, and that often provides my land and nature spirits with a way to get my attention. I know which birds live nearby, and which are infrequent enough visitors that their presence might be meaningful.

Spirits of your local waterways are likewise important, and also seem to function like nesting dolls, with a spirit of a stream, the creek it feeds into, the river that feeds into, and then around here — the Chesapeake Bay. I really think every animist witch ought to know what watershed they live in, down to the small streams closest to you! At the larger end, your local river spirit can be a very powerful ally, and with the vast number of witchy uses for water, especially running water, I think it makes sense to nurture that relationship. As with the large land spirits, my offerings to my local waterway spirits are mostly “being a good citizen”, and my contact with them is more mind-brush than casual conversation. Interestingly, though — and this is just my personal experience, so your mileage may vary — I do find the river spirits to be more likely to take on humanoid forms and speak to me in words. That may come from my background in Irish Polytheism, where several river names are those of goddesses, because I do tend to address rivers (and the Great Lakes, and the Chesapeake Bay) as deities in their own right.

For both of these categories of spirit, the role they play in the defense of my home is mainly that I can ask them for forewarning if danger is nearby, and for assistance if I attempt to expel something from my property. If I banish something, I don’t want it to take two steps and come right back, and sometimes the land and waterway spirits are willing to help keep it away. They can also ground out or disperse unwanted energies, though I find it best to ask them how to transmute the energies so that they will be most useful. I have even used some of my excess energy as offerings recently: I was running a little hot due to a hormonal problem, and got up early in the morning to go on a cave tour. Inside, I ended up stumbling a bit because of drowsiness and balance issues, so I stopped and greeted the spirit of the cave and asked what I could give, in exchange for sure footing. The answer I received: your heat. So I took off the jacket (which was a little warm anyhow), and let my excess heat float off of me, into the cave. And after that, I didn’t have any more trouble walking over the uneven terrain!

The other main category of Outside spirits just consists of spirits who live nearby. You have human neighbors, and animal, plant, insect, fungi neighbors, spirits of land and water and (perhaps) of constructed things, but also there are other types of spirits who just go about their business mostly unseen in this world we share. For me, the spirits of this category with whom I interact the most often are the Fair Folk. (All the rest of this paragraph is my own UPG, based on my own experiences; I make no claims that others will experience it the same way, even within my local area, and outside my local area I have no idea how things are organized. Understood? Then let’s continue.) There is a fairy court near me that has territory roughly corresponding to the local stream’s watershed, and the Queen of that court has become a close ally of mine. When I banish something, her folk will (often) chase it beyond their own borders, and when there are dangers, she (often) warns me, and when she requests my assistance in her own difficulties, I aid her with my magic as best I am able. As her stream empties into the Potomac River, her court seems to belong to a larger assembly of courts aligned with the Potomac watershed, and then above that, there seems to be a higher authority encompassing the entire Chesapeake Bay watershed. I try to nurture relationships with each of the small courts I come into contact with, and with the larger authorities, but the court whose territory I live in is the most important for my home defense. We are very frequently in contact, and I give very frequent offerings, and when there is something I need help dealing with that lies beyond my wards but not beyond her borders, it is usually to her that I first turn, even before my gods. The Fair Folk are fickle though, and so diverse it’s impossible to paint them all with the same brush — the type of relationship you’re likely to have with your local Fair Folk depends on them perhaps even more than it depends on the steps you take to nurture a relationship. It is far easier and far safer to be on pleasantly cordial terms like “you stay out of my home and I’ll not meddle in yours” than it is to be involved in a pact that amounts to mutual defense, but for those who do have Good Neighbors inclined to alliances, for prices you’re willing to pay, they can be very valuable allies.

Some of the members of the court local to me do come in the house now and again, but mostly they stay outside, hence their inclusion here. However, they are the main reason, as I said in the first blog, that I don’t use iron at my property line. That does mean I have to use a little more finesse when it comes to creating wards that will allow emissaries in, for example, but not those inclined to make trouble. I do rely on my agreement with their queen for that, in large part, but I also have some finely tuned interior wards, as I mentioned before, and House Rules, which I will explain in more depth in the next blog. In the meantime, Daniela Siminia has an excellent overview of her own approach to allowing in some-but-not-all, on her own blog, here.

And as that’s already quite a long post, we’ll call that a wrap! I’ll be back with part two next week, hopefully. I’m trying to post a new blog every Wednesday, so check back then!

Edit: Here’s the link to Part 2!

A Lunar Eclipse, The Midnight Culmination of The Pleiades, And Otherworldly Tides

It’s been a while (and a whole change of blogging platform) since I last made a “Faery Weather” post,¹ but it seems to be That Time again. For those who haven’t seen the old posts, this basically started when the Morrigan and some of my Fair Folk contacts started giving me messages to pass along about how activity in the Otherworlds was going to spill over into my local environment (which was defined somewhat broadly by Them as the Chesapeake Bay watershed region, though it is probably less applicable the farther one gets from the Bay itself). The first few blogs turned into a semi-regular series, but when Na Morrigna had me start writing out Their messages on the Dark Moon, some of the information was getting passed along that way instead. I haven’t really been sharing much of my personal involvements in various Otherworldly shenanigans recently for a couple of reasons: some of it is sort difficult to describe, some of it I can’t really talk about, and it’s all very deep in the UPG well of woo.²

But this “weather report”, though still UPG, is more general in application, and the gist of it is this: over the next few days we’ve got the waning of the Leonid meteor shower, a full moon, a lunar eclipse, and the midnight culmination of the Pleiades cluster.³ Any of those by themselves might mean a “high tide” of Otherworldly activity spilling over into our realm, but with all of them together and taking onto consideration just how much activity there’s been on “quiet” days lately,⁴ I think we need to be prepared for a higher-than-normal high tide.

The usual warnings apply: ground, center and shield. Ward your spaces. Check in with your spirit allies. Be prepared for extra wackiness even in your mundane life!

However, if you know how to ride a wave, this is an excellent time to go witchy-surfing (if you’ll excuse the mixed metaphor, haha). There’s extra liminality going on — the sun is transitioning from Scorpio to Sagittarius as well — and there’s a profusion of swirling energies, perfect to harness if you have a working well-suited to these conditions. I’m supposed to recommend caution, but I understand that sometimes experimentation is the best way to learn, so use your own best judgement.

If you are planning to make overtures to Otherworldly beings, just remember that even the Fair Folk most friendly to humanity are not always kind, and though the Fair Folk do not lie, they often mislead. I usually recommend starting with those closest to you if you intend to work with the Fair Folk — your own Good Neighbors — but others will be riding the winds and traveling the fairy roads as well: some neutral, some baleful, some hostile or even predatory. You don’t want to grab the attention of the Slua Sí! Being able to discern between neighbors and interlopers is very important in spiritwork in general but it’s especially important right now.

There have been conflicts these past couple of years that took place mostly in the Otherworlds but have spilled over into our realm,⁵ and I’ve been experiencing more conflicts taking place unseen in parts of our world as well, lately. It’s tense out there — though like with mundane wars, some places have been hit more heavily than others. There isn’t really a major physical dividing line that I’m aware of, but the idea of “front lines” (as humans experienced them in the trenches of the World Wars) makes a pretty good analogy to distinguish between harder hit areas and places that have been more sheltered from the conflicts. If you live in an area that’s been more like the front lines, it will be even more important to shield and ward these next few days.

Hopefully this message finds its way to those who need to hear it, but if it isn’t relevant to your path please scroll on by. I’m happy to discuss things over email if anyone has more specific concerns, and I’ll respond to any comments posted here as best I can, but I think it’s important to stress again that this is UPG, and not everyone experiences Otherworldly flows in the same manner. This message will be most helpful to those whose UPG best aligns with my own!

Notes:

Those are available here on wordpress, if you’re interested.
UPG, for those unfamiliar with the term, stands for “Unverified Personal Gnosis”, which is knowledge I have gained from my own personal experiences interacting with the Otherworlds and Otherworldly beings.
For that last one, I recommend reading Morgan Daimler’s recent book “Living Fairy”, on their experiences with Otherworldly celebrations following the cycle of the Pleiades cluster.
A lot of pagan writers have commented on this phenomenon, but John Beckett had a pretty good introductory pair of blogs in 2016 and has some more recent thoughts about it, too. Those can be found here on Patheos.
And these have been even worse, in my experience, than what Beckett mentions in the blogs linked above, and I’ve heard similar from a few of my fellow “fairy-involved” witches.

The thumbnail image on this post is a stock photo of the Pleiades cluster provided by SquareSpace.

Building Ethical Relationships with the Land

I read a blog by Hecate Demeter recently that I thought asked a very good question at the end: “Do you ever introduce yourself to the land? If you travel and will be somewhere for a few days, do you ever bring an offering to the new land?”

My immediate answer was “Yes, of course I do,” but my very next thought was – “I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone do that at an event who wasn’t doing it with me.” That doesn’t mean people aren’t doing it, of course – doing it privately is much better than attempting to show off to your fellow attendees – but it did make me wonder. How many people actually do this? Do they always do it, or only at witchy/pagan events? Do they do it differently if they’re visiting in different contexts?

And then I reflected on my own practice. I tend to default to the ceremonies and prayers of the indigenous tradition from my mother’s side of the family. Tobacco, a self introduction that includes the place I was born, murmured words of thanks to all friendly spirits. When I’m at witchy or pagan events, or anywhere I’m likely to do magic, I also seek out the Local Fair Folk. As part of my work with the Fairy Queen I serve, I am supposed to check in at the local consulate, in a manner of speaking. However, If I’m somewhere only briefly, or if I’m not on Turtle Island*, my introductions are more likely to be silent and meditative, seeking brief connection and energetic exchange. In general, I consider friendly relations with the local land wights, body-of-water wights, nature spirits, and otherworldly beings to be an important exchange of hospitality.

If there are Dead around, you can try reaching out to them, too, if you can do it in a way that is respectful and not dangerous to you or to them. If they have very different life experiences or spoke very different languages or practiced very different spiritual systems to yours, they may not want to hear from you. That goes double if your bloodline ancestors wronged them or were their enemies. However, knowing who not to bother or ask a favor of is also an important part of getting to know your neighbors! Also it can sometimes be a good idea to leave the Dead – especially the Unquiet Dead – to a witch who specializes in deathwork.

Occasionally Deities/Divinities** may show up as well. One time I was in Puerto Rico talking to the waves on a beach, and a Divine Spirit associated with the sea — in the shape of a Black woman with blue hair — touched my mind, leaving me with a brief experience of divine awe. (I think she was probably Yemaya, but she didn’t give me a name — just the vision, and a sense of welcome.) When they show up, though, they are not usually invitations to a deeper relationship. These brief experiences are the energetic equivalent of getting a friendly wave from a Head of State who is currently in a motorcade that just happened to be going by wherever I am.

Most of Hecate Demeter’s blog series, however, is a call to ground your practice in the place you are, and to build relationships with the land, water, and nature spirits who live nearest to you. She says (and I very much agree) that we don’t need to “re-enchant” anything. The land is still enchanted, still inspirited. What we need to do is to rekindle our relationship where we are, wherever we are Right Now. Lots of modern USian*** people feel like they don’t have roots because as a culture we move around a lot, but population movements have always happened. Even if you’re only going to be around somewhere for six months, it’s still a good idea to get to know your neighbors – corporeal and otherwise.

In my own practice, I try to build conscientious and respectful relationships with the spirits I encounter as I go about my daily life. A lot of those are Otherworldly beings of various types that largely fall into the broad category of “fae”, or they are spirits of specific “objects”, like trees, cars, houses, creeks. But I find that when I reach out to the land itself, there are what feels like layers of spirit, like the layers of a nesting doll. The deeper and larger I go, the harder it is to communicate, though I have had pretty good results with rivers and cities as singular units. For example, I wrote this quarter call that calls upon rivers local to me for use in a group rite I helped lead:

Tonight we create sacred space by grounding ourselves deeply in our natural surroundings. We live here, in a landscape dominated by the Appalachian mountains to the West, and the Atlantic ocean to our East, beneath the dome of the Sky. But tonight we call on powers more local, better known to us.

In the North we call to Lady of the mighty Potomac, River of Swans, Lifeblood of this area. We offer you sweet smelling incense, and soothing herbal waters, if you will stand as Guardian to our ritual tonight.

In the East we call to the Great Lady of the Chesapeake Bay, Grave of a Meteor and Mother of Rivers. All waters in this area come home to you. We offer you sweet smelling incense, and soothing herbal waters, if you will stand as Guardian to our ritual tonight.

In the South we call to the Lady of the majestic Rappahannock, River of Tides, Quick-Rising Waters. We offer you sweet smelling incense, and soothing herbal waters, if you will stand as Guardian to our ritual tonight.

In the West we call to the Lady of the beautiful Shenandoah, River of Spruces, Daughter of the Potomac. We offer you sweet smelling incense, and soothing herbal waters, if you will stand as Guardian to our ritual tonight.
(c) 2019 by the author, Alexandra Nic Bhé Chuille. Please ask for permission before using.

Hecate Demeter says in the second blog that being in relationship with your landbase will make both your spiritual practice and your magic stronger, and I couldn’t agree more. I also find that cultivating relationships with your hyper-local land and neighborly spirits helps a lot with ward maintenance, and some of them may even be willing to enter a sort of agreement that if someone else intrudes into your shared space, they’ll let you know.

The third blog in the series has a few good ideas about how to begin this work, but it’s a bit like any spirit work, really – just go introduce yourself and see what happens. It’s hard to go wrong with a shared drink of water, as long as your water bottle isn’t made of steel. (Most land wights and nature spirits won’t mind that, but the Daoine Sidhe and some of the Huldufolk certainly will!) Use divination or ask for an omen, however it is that you normally talk to spirits. And get to know your land and its inhabitants!

*The continent of North America.

**I have seen Yemaya and others referred to with a distinction made between Deities and Divinities, and as I am both not sure what the distinction is, and also unsure who I was interacting with, I just put both. I occasionally use the term “god-level” for interactions like this, to describe an unknown entity who seems to have the level of power and vastness usually attributed to deities, but who is either someone I cannot identify, or is someone not known in any surviving lore.

*** I use “USian” here as shorthand for “US American”, to differentiate between citizens of the USA versus people who live in the Americas more generally.

Links to the blogs:

Crow Folks: Send Out Ripples

This month’s Dark Moon, when I journeyed to see Na Morrigna, another of my allies came along, one of the Fair Folk who often takes the shape of a white horse, and as we five stood around the great cauldron, she bent forward so that her white hair fell into the water of the cauldron, and it filled with visions that she had seen, both Otherworldly wars and human carnage, in a sort of dreadful symmetry. I began to feel overwhelmed by it all, when the Three Morrigna spoke to me as if in one voice. This is the wisdom they would have me share:

The Cauldron of the World is too large for you to control, though you can create small ripples. Focus instead on the Cauldron of your heart. That is small enough for you to work changes within. When you have wrought change in yourself, send ripples out into your sphere of influence. Focus not on sorcery but on mundane workings, this summer.

I have been told to skip June to focus on my own work, and to return with another message or poem at the dark moon in July, in preparation for the Lughnasadh harvest.

Bealtaine with the Local Fair Folk

As frequent readers of this blog might guess, my upcoming Bealtaine* plans will revolve around the Fair Folk. While most folklore tells us to ward and protect against Them on festival days, here in faery-witchcraft-land, it’s a holiday to celebrate connections with Them, instead. I plan to do a simple solitary ritual on Oíche Bealtaine (May-Eve), and give offerings to a Local Fairy Queen who is an ally of mine. I call her the Rosegay Queen, since she seems to be associated with wild roses. I’ll also be paying my respects to the royal couple she has claimed descent from, Úna and Fionnbharr. To that end, I have some mead, and I’m thinking about making some of the Fairy Cakes Morgan Daimler learned to make in a dream. Perhaps I’ll top them with hawthorn jelly (it is SO GOOD), and maybe I’ll get some rose flavored tea or floral lemonade.

I was hoping to buy a young hawthorn tree this spring, but was warned not to because of the 17 year cicadas, which are due any day now. (Apparently they can stress and kill young shrubs!) So my May Bush this year is probably the rhododendron out front again – but I suppose that’s in keeping with the rose theme, as another name for those is the rosebay!

I’m still planning the menu for the family dinner, which usually is the bulk of the household observation of holidays. I tend to stick to dishes with ingredients that are in season locally. I have in the past made a strawberry-filled salad, but I think the strawberries are going to be a little later this year. The wild violets are coming up, though, and those are edible! I may do a side salad with violets and a quiche with local eggs, goat cheese, and fresh herbs. My herbs are all regreening in the bed out front, and I should have plenty. Maybe I’ll use some of the baby green onions, too – those will need thinning soon!

After dinner we’ll probably have a fire in the pit outside, and do a short round of offerings and prayer, like my household does for most holidays. My kiddo really likes to watch the fires, and even though he’s not really clear on what’s going on yet, he’s keen to be involved! As he gets older, he’ll understand more and can decide how much he wants to participate but for the moment he likes to toss things in the fire whenever he’s allowed to!

I haven’t decided yet if I’ll do my solo ritual after the rest of them go to bed, or earlier, at sunset, but I’m leaning towards earlier rather than later. None of the rest of the people in my household really interact with the Fair Folk much. Not on purpose, anyway, though sometimes They follow me home or come in to deliver a message, or some such. I try to keep “office hours” as best I can, but serving a Fairy Queen is a full-time job! Still, there are some perks, and with any luck I’ll be dreaming of celebrations in the Otherworlds on Oíche Bealtaine, as I have sometimes in the past. (And returning home in the morning, Gods willing!)

* Yes, I know this isn’t how a lot of people spell it, but I think it’s important to use the Irish spelling when I’m going to be honoring Irish Fairy Monarchs, and this is the modern Irish spelling. Living culture and all that. See Also: Úna and Fionnbharr, both of which have other Old Irish spellings.

The Best Place to Meet The Good Neighbors Might Just Be Your Neighborhood

John Beckett wrote an article recently, about how we as pagans and magical workers ought to be paying attention to changes between the worlds, and I enjoyed it, and generally agree. As I think back, more than half of what I’ve done this past year in my spiritual-magical practice was just dealing with Otherworldly situations of one type or another:

Establishing and then maintaining relationships with who I refer to as my “Locals”, after I moved in March 2020
My regularly-scheduled oracular work, much of which focused on Otherworldly goings-on
Discussing Otherworldly turbulence with other practitioners (both local and not)
Divination to gain insight into Otherworldly encounters, both mine and others’
Helping friends and acquaintances deal with their own Otherworldly encounters
Etc.

The other less-than-half consisted mainly of ongoing divination studies, maintaining relationships with my Deities and other Allies, celebrating holidays, and using magic to help problem-solve mundane issues as they cropped up — business as usual in my life. I’ve also done my fair share of gardening and baking from scratch and attempting to entertain a lonely toddler who couldn’t go to the park or the pool during the pandemic, of course! But I think Beckett’s point that we need to be doing more than just mundane prep work, that we need to be monitoring the changes between the worlds is very important.

The article gives a rhetorical question: “So, what do we need to do to pay attention to the changes that are happening in the Otherworld and between the worlds?”, and then goes on to answer that: build foundations, be places you can observe, listen to your senses (including the inner ones), explore by journeying. Anyone who is familiar with Beckett’s writing will be unsurprised to see daily practice listed under foundations, and regular practice is definitely important, but I must admit my own practice is more “every couple of days on average” than strictly “daily”! I’ve never managed to do *anything* every day for longer than three weeks, but I do 3-4 days a week just fine for months at a stretch! So don’t be too disheartened if your practice looks more like mine, but I still generally agree with this point. It’s the second one that made me pause.

The second heading is titled “Put yourself in places to see what’s happening”, and while I agree with the starting premise (“if you want to encounter an Otherworldly person, your odds are much better if you put yourself in a place where they’re more likely to be”), I can’t say the same for the second half. It emphasizes the importance of going to wild places, and ends with the phrase “the wilder the better.”

I disagree.

I don’t think wilder is always better, when it comes to seeking out Otherworldly beings. Most of the Fair Folk I’m in most frequent contact with, I met somewhere nearby, often in one of the local suburban stream valley parks. I live in Northern Virginia, and while a lot of these parks are large and fairly sprawling, my chronic illnesses sometimes make it difficult to go longer distances across more complicated terrain, so I usually stay on or near the path, almost always somewhere I can still hear traffic noise in the background. And yet, I have encounters. Numerous encounters. Most any time I go out with the intention of finding a Local to wherever I am, in my own neighborhood, or in someone else’s (back when we could gather in groups!), I find Someone. Liminal times and places can be helpful, and the paved trails around here are liminal in their own way (as most people are only passing through) but they certainly aren’t very “wild”.

I think part of the reason that I have so many suburban encounters is simply because I, and most of my nearby friends, live in suburbia. That is the environment I am in the most often. In the places I frequent the most, I begin to develop relationships with the land wights and the nature spirits, as a matter of course, and along with that comes the possibility — or perhaps the likelihood — that I will eventually encounter whatever Otherworldly Neighbors also frequent these places. So if I walk out my door with the intention of meeting my Good Neighbors, I usually do. They have already “seen me around”, we already have friends in common, and the foundations for mutual hospitality have already been laid.

If I am somewhere very new to me, like when I travelled to conferences and events (back when those were in person!), I will give offerings and introduce myself to the land and the nearby nature spirits first, before I attempt to introduce myself to the Otherworldly Locals, and while I usually manage to find Them and exchange hospitality, it is in the wilder places that I have gotten the most push-back. Things like token acceptance, but no chit-chat; a sense of knowing that my offering is accepted, but no visions; only the bare minimum politesse. They are more standoffish, and I have fewer common relationships to draw on, especially when the human hosts are unknown to me. If I were looking for a new ally to help me better understand our current turbulence, I wouldn’t do it there. Do you talk to people who live somewhere else about your local weather and local politics, or do you talk to your nearby neighbors? I would think for most of us, it’s the latter, especially if we’re trying to understand the patterns, and not just recounting anecdotes. Your internet friends three timezones away might find your story about April Fool’s Snow interesting, but they don’t have the same kind of local knowledge as someone who’s lived in your town their entire life. When it comes to climate change, I’m interested in the wisdom of local humans. When it comes to the Otherworldly turbulence of Tower Time, I turn to the wisdom of Good Neighbors who’ve been been Local since before I came to this town — and perhaps also since before I was born, or before my grandparents were born, though they probably wouldn’t tell me!

The rest of Beckett’s advice seems good. Learning to develop one’s subtle senses is usually helpful, though I haven’t read Mat Auryn’s book, so I can’t comment on that, specifically. Exploring via journeys is something I’d also recommend, though I would suggest newbies start with Lora O’Brien’s Otherworld Journeys classes over at the Irish Pagan School. The first class is free, and after that there’s a lot of material at the higher levels. It isn’t how I learned to journey, but it does work well as remote learning for practitioners at any level. Experienced folk should be able to easily adapt to her methodology — I did! And the method is also designed specifically for the Irish Otherworlds, and as such, is designed to minimize some of the associated danger. I will still echo Beckett’s next point, though — this isn’t Safe. Exploring the Otherworlds isn’t safe, trucking with spirits isn’t safe, working for Deities isn’t safe, witchcraft isn’t safe. But it’s necessary work.

Likewise, I agree that sharing our stories is vitally important. I’ve been doing more of that, mainly on social media (in FB groups or on others’ posts mostly, and a couple of Discord servers), and in the few groups I was a part of pre-pandemic that I’m still regularly attending Zoom sessions for (which at this point is only the Potomac Ondvegisulur Seidr Guild, as the Fellowship Beyond the Star is somewhat on hiatus currently, though I hope to get back involved with our local UU Pagan group, Fox and Fungi at UU Reston). It helps to compare notes, to figure out what seems to be a larger pattern, and what may be a personal fluke instead. I have put some of it on this blog, and should maybe do more of that in the future, but with how fast everything seems to be changing, and with how deep into UPG Woo Land a lot of my stories are, at the moment I’m more comfortable sharing only the broad strokes of those insights in public, or contributing some details when they align with someone else’s experience. What and when to share, and when to keep silent instead, is a line I’m still figuring out how to walk, and I tend to err on the side of silence. Lately, however, I’ve been feeling like I should share at least the general shape of my interactions with the Fair Folk, and this seemed like a good place to start.

Note: Another thing worth mentioning, though it would have interrupted the stream of my discussion above, is that what most white Americans think of as “wild” or “wilderness” is a colonial construct, especially when the adjectives “pristine” or “untouched” get thrown around. A lot of these places were carefully and gently tended by indigenous peoples for generations, possibly hundreds or thousands of years, before the settlers showed up and declared them “untamed”. For more information on this, I suggest researching the importance of fires for maintaining the Great Plains, and the nurturing of berry patches and sugar maple forests in the Eastern Woodlands and Great Lakes regions.

Riders on a Baleful Wind, and a Charm to Keep Them at Bay

This time of year, between the autumnal equinox and Samhain, is when I notice the most activity from a loose grouping of spirits I’ve begun to refer to as Riders on a Baleful Wind. I’m referring both to the Wild Hunt ⁠(or, really, Hunts, plural) and also to some of the Fair Folk⁠—trooping fairies who travel near these dates*, and groups like the slua sí, who are also associated with wind or storms, and overlap somewhat with the folkloric Wild Hunt.

As a folklore motif and a mythological archetype, the Wild Hunt is prevalent across much of Northwestern Europe, and the Hunt of each region has its own leader. Often these leaders are Pre-Christian deities associated with war or death, like Odin/Woden and Gwyn Ap Nudd. Other times they’re figures associated with the aos sí, like Manannán Mac Lir, or they’re said to be famous ghosts, like Herne the Hunter. These folk tales came with European Immigrants to the Americas as well, and here the Hunt is sometimes known as the Ghost Riders. (Some of you will be familiar with the song, I imagine.) Besides the leader, who or what exactly the rest of the company is varies from tale to tale. Sometimes they are human dead, sometimes they’re said to be fairies or demons, but most frequently these groups seem to be something of a motley crew. The overlapping circles of the Fair Folk, the Gods, and the Dead are difficult to pick apart, and it’s especially difficult to draw any clear lines when we’re looking at the Wild Hunt and related groups of weather-riding unfriendly otherworldly beings.

Unfriendly and intimidating though they may seem, not all of them are actually malevolent. That’s why I term them “baleful”, not “baneful”, and each individual group poses a different type and level of danger. Malevolent or not, however, they’re generally not spirits most witches want in or around their homes or places of business, and with that in mind I’ve been working on a charm object to add a little additional protection to whatever wards you already have in place.

Warding Charm

The charm itself is fairly small and would easily blend into an autumn wreath. The ingredients are pretty simple as well: a sweetgum ball, some red yarn, and iron water.

SWEETGUM BALL: One per charm, dried, preferably with the stem attached.

Part of the work I’ve been doing with the Ogham for the past two years (or more, really, but I think it was two years ago that I really started diving in deeply in a structured way) is finding local plants that have similar energy to the plants of the tree ogham list.** Sweetgum, a tree indigenous to my area, has an energy that I think is similar in some important ways to Blackthorn. While it doesn’t have thorns, it does have spiky seed balls, and its sweet-scented sap, like blackthorn sloes, is actually very bitter tasting. Additionally, it’s a favored food of luna moth caterpillars, an insect I have long associated with nocturnal fairy beings. Blackthorn is sometimes said to belong to or to ward off the Othercrowd, and I find Sweetgum fits that niche as well. I have since learned that sweetgum balls are also used in hoodoo for protection, which dovetails nicely with both my experience of the tree, and this charm.

RED YARN: Or thread, I suppose. Enough to wrap around the sweetgum ball twice at perpendicular intersections, and tie off to leave tails for hanging.

I decided to spin my own yarn. I’ve wanted to learn to spin for a long time, but until recently thought I was allergic to wool. It turns out, I’m probably reacting to a chemical used in the commercial processing, because I did a test with a friend’s fleece-to-homespun and had no redness, no itching, no bumps, no hives! Excited, I borrowed a drop spindle and purchased some red-dyed roving from an artisan supplier. They included a sample of some other colors and I used that to figure out a technique for spinning. That way, once I started on the red roving, I could focus more on spinning my intent and my power into the yarn, instead of still figuring out what the heck I was doing. If you don’t spin, I recommend braiding embroidery floss as a good alternative for adding your intent and power to the string. Something like: I’m a badass witch and I protect this space; I decide who enters and who the wards keep out.

Iron Water: Soak some nails in water with a little splash of apple cider vinegar for a few days. When it’s ready, dip the sweetgum ball, yarn and all, into the water and let it get saturated.

I doubt I need to tell most of my readers that iron is known to ward off the Fair Folk, but just in case you need the refresher: that’s why we’re using iron water. You could also stick those very nails into this charm if you wanted, but that’s a bit stronger than I wanted for my personal charms, and it would be a little too strong for some allies I don’t want to keep out. I wanted something vaguely iron scented. Enough iron to say that I know what I’m about, but not enough iron to deeply offend those who are welcome across my threshold.

This is also probably a good time to tell you that this charm, as I’ve made it, is basically a “No Tresspassing” sign. It’s not going to do much good if it’s your only line of defense. If you have decent house wards, though, and gods or allies you can turn to in times of need, that sign will be enough to make those Riders more inclined to go around, rather than through. There are fewer obstacles elsewhere, and easier prey to be found. As with most predators, that’s usually enough, as long as you don’t provoke them.

* Though the ones who travel near the autumnal equinox may be following the Pleiades, not the equinox. See Morgan Daimler’s recent writings on that for more information.

** Nota Bene: The Ogham is an alphabet, and it’s not just about trees. Trees are one of the ogham lists. There’s also word ogham, skill ogham, bird ogham, even dog and waterway ogham. Eventually I’ll make my own local herb and bird and waterways lists, too, and maybe a modern skills ogham. But a lot of my general witchy practice includes work with plants, so trees seemed like a good place to start.

Our Midsummer, and Working Intuitively

Midsummer, for us, is a celebration of Manannan and Fand. Last year we got down to the waterfront, but this year we stayed closer to home. We made a simple offering of an apple, some cheese (we were having grilled cheese for dinner), a fruity summer alcohol, and their candle, placed on our table and lit.

After dinner, we went to our plot in the community garden a few blocks away, where I *finally* got the weeding done (we’d had an explosion of something I didn’t manage to identify earlier), and did a bit of gathering. I brought home this mugwort and lavender to dry, along with a few other herbs, all harvested with a ceramic knife.

This is also an important time for the Fair Folk, and it does seem that whatever carnival shenanigans were going on earlier this summer are now over, and I’m a bit relieved.

I’m not exactly sure why I needed to harvest these herbs on Midsummer’s Day as the day waned, or what exactly I’m meant to do with them, but the ingredients seem to be a dreamwork blend of some sort, and I’m sure I’ll figure it out. I got a nudge, and I followed it. Story of my life, really. I do most of my witchcraft by intuition, trusting that I’ll figure it out as I learn by doing. Sometimes it all becomes clear later, when someone pops into my life, desperately needing something I made months earlier and then stashed in a cabinet!

Faery Weather Report: Beltaine

I haven’t done one of these in a while, but last night I was meeting with some of my local witches, working on a small-but-growing pagan community at our local UU church, and as the conversation drifted, one of them asked if things had been weird for others, as it seemed to them that there’d been an uptick in spirit activity, especially of the chaotic and dangerous sort. Others agreed, and though I hadn’t really noticed a change, my daily life is mostly lived inside my own wards, and wherever else I go I can’t help but notice a flurry of spirit activity unless I specifically shield it out. For better or for worse, my particular brand of Senses mean that I very rarely experience the Veil the way I usually hear others talk about it. So I took a moment to check in with my local allies among the Fair Folk, and the response was swift and somewhat amused at my lack of awareness.

I was told that, yes, the Borders were Open. Fae were riding and rioting like they normally do at Beltaine, only it had begun with the first sliver of crescent moon in April (approximately the 7th), and it would continue until the very last crescent was lost to darkness in June (approximately the 2nd)… or perhaps beyond. Topsy Turvy time was upon us, and Lawlessness, and all things were allowed during the extended carnival.

While that might sound fun, for humans it is Bad News. Capricious at the best of times, fae unrestrained by anything resembling rules of engagement are incredibly unpredictable. And unpredictable could mean anything from general bad luck and milk souring to getting distracted at the wrong moment and dying in a freak accident. In my experience, that’s one of their favorite ways to steal children and pregnant people in our modern world: accidental deaths.

So: shield yourself, your family. Ward your home, your vehicle, your place of business. Get some iron and rowan. Look to folklore. Be careful out there.

I do not know how far afield this warning stays true, but it applies at the very least to the Potomac River watershed, and I have corroboration from a colleague in Baltimore that it’s true up there as well. So likely for most of DelMarVa, DC, parts of PA and WV. I would not be surprised if it’s more global than that but I have no evidence one way or the other. If you have contacts among the Fair Folk local to you, I suggest you check in with them. (It’s good praxis anyway, to check on anything a fellow witch tells you, yes? Yes.) At the very least check in with your guides or do a bit of divination, to get specifics on how things may affect you.

I’ll be camping for Beltaine next weekend so I will not be available after the 2nd, but before then I’m happy to answer questions or offer advice. I’m not the only one who does this work, though – chances are you already know someone. Ask around.

If you’ll be at Fertile Ground Gathering in Triangle, VA, however, I’ll see you there on Friday and Saturday!

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