spiritwork – Page 2 – Serendipities

Song for the Way Opening

For a few years now, Morgan Daimler has been celebrating a liturgical cycle based on the movements of the Pleiades, and sharing their ritual formats (which are also collected in their book Living Fairy). I’ve sort of marked the dates casually, giving offerings but that’s about it, until this year. This year, one of my local allies, who I call the Autumn King, indicated that he would like it if I’d celebrate the entire cycle more intentionally, and so after the strong energy that came through last night (during which I perceived his Rade), I decided I really needed to do something tonight for the acronychal rising, or what Daimler calls The Way Opening.

So, this afternoon I made some fairy cakes (original recipe also by Daimler and available here), but I altered the recipe slightly, doing a full cup of oat flour, and half a cup each of applesauce and honey. (Don’t use steel utensils, though — I unthinkingly picked up a stainless steel measuring cup that I used twice in the previous 24 hours without incident, and this afternoon it cut me nearly bad enough to draw blood. Message heard, whoops!) I then used an unsalted butter to grease a glass dish, and baked a single round cake (approx 40 mins at 350F).

I offered this with a glass of beer, and sat down to read out the prayers from the book, altering them slightly to fit my practice a little better.

And then… and then.

For some reason, one of the prayers reminded me of a stanza from the ballad of True Thomas/Thomas the Rhymer, the one that describes the road to Fairy:

And see not ye that bonny road,
Which winds about the fernie brae?
That is the road to fair Elfland,
Whe[re] you and I this night maun gae.
(Traditional Scots)

And then I started hearing the music in my head, and I went to find the song and listen to it, and about ten minutes later, I had a full ritual hymn with seven stanzas, adapted from Daimler’s own prayers but with some of my own flourish… and probably Their own inspiration.

Song for the Way Opening

I call to all you goodly wights,
My kin and friends whoe’er shall be.
All you who’d be my allies true,
And come and walk this path with me.

I call to all the Queens and Kings,
Monarchs and Sov’reigns, all gentry near —
If you would celebrate with me
Tis time to come and join me here.

Tonight the Queens rise in the East —
The Seven Sister-Queens so bright.
They’ll cross above the horizon
As daylight’s falling into night.

Their Eldritch light, it brightly glows:
A signal fire, burning blue.
The Queens will dance at twilight’s edge
As their sky gates open anew.

Between worlds, and between time,
The gates will open fully wide,
And then upon that fair broad road,
The Queens and noble hosts will ride.

As they ride past, may we be blessed,
With token or with smile or nod,
And may they take our offerings,
As their refreshment while they’re abroad.

A good word to the Fairy Rade,
And may you never do us ill!
Ride out along the fairy roads,
Bringing with you Autumn’s chill.

I do have a small thing to share from Freyja as well, from my equinox celebration, but that’s going to have to wait another day or two for me to get it worked out and typed up!

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!

Crow Folks: Rest, to Prepare for the Coming Year

December 5, 2021
by Alexandra

I went to see Na Morrigna this month after the solar eclipse. I didn’t expect too much to be going on near me, as the eclipse was only visible in the southern hemisphere, but it worked out that way due to some events in my personal life. That made me wonder a little, especially once I heard reports of others experiencing another high tide, similar to the one I wrote about last month. But when I went to see Them, around Their cauldron, I poured in the cherry mead I’d brought, and they handed me a cup, made of a gleaming golden metal. I grasped the two handles, and filled the cup from the cauldron at Their urging, and then drank deeply. Here is the message They gave me to share with my community:

You have increased your emotional maturity and your wisdom in this past season. You have been pouring out your cup to fill others’. This is good and just work, but it requires balance. You stand on the point of a spear, and your fatigue grows. Any misstep in your spear-dance might mean injury, illness. Choose rest, or your fatigue will become exhaustion, and you will be mired in burnout, withdrawing from all you have accomplished. Choose rest, so that you may feel renewed as the new secular year dawns at the next dark moon. Renewed, and abundant in energy, focus, and mental clarity.

The next dark moon is January 2nd, so I’ll see you all in the new year!

Post image is a stock photo provided by squarespace, in black and white, of black birds in the uppermost branches of trees, with a grey sky above.

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.

Ancestor Work: My thoughts

Last Sunday, John Beckett wrote a blog titled “We Owe Toxic Ancestors Nothing”, and it spurred a lot of reactions, and thoughts, and commentary (as all his best blogs do). After Sara Amis responded with a blog of their own, “A Theological Argument for Ancestor Reverence”, Beckett wrote a follow-up, “A Pagan Theology of the Dead”. It’s mostly that last one that sparked the blog I’ve written below, but if you haven’t read all three, go do that first. I’ll wait!

While I agree with the broad strokes of Beckett’s first blog, where he and Amis disagree, my own experiences have given me opinions closer to Amis’s. Most of the Ancestors and Beloved Dead I’ve encountered — my own, and those of others I’ve assisted in my healing work and my spae-craft tradition(1) — do seem to have a tangible shift in perception after they pass over, especially if they were skeptical of a life after death, or if illnesses (physical but also mental) contributed heavily to their outlook and attitudes. Who are they, when they are free of their pain?

I don’t think there’s an easy answer that covers every situation and every ancestor — they’re not all suddenly sunshiney helpful loving people, but they might not be as toxic as they were when they were alive, either. I think it’s best to figure out your own boundaries with each individual. Some of them might be truly sorry for the pain and suffering they caused and may have both the willingness and the ability to help you now. Some may not even answer when you call. That isn’t to say that you need to reach out to everyone — I agree with Beckett that you probably shouldn’t try that with anyone you’re likely to find triggering — but not everything is such a hard line, and you may want to meet with someone in your grey areas before you decide if they’re going to be welcome at your altar.

For example: one of my mother’s uncles was a bit of a hellion in life, and died by suicide. I did not expect to meet him in my journeys, as he died before I was born, but nonetheless he showed up and revealed to me that he’d found his peace and had become something of a family psychopomp. I suddenly remembered my maternal grandmother telling me that her mother (my great-grandmother and the mother of that great-uncle), had told her about a strange dream she’d had a week before her death, where she saw her son and he held her hand as they walked up to a door. Pieces fell into place, and I had a new understanding of what kind of Ancestor my great-uncle had become.

You probably should try to include anyone who was supporting and loving to you in life, even if you weren’t open about your practice before they passed. See what kind of set up will make them most at ease, but it may surprise you: people who were very religiously orthodox in life may have slightly broader opinions about what kind of truths are possible, now that they’ve passed on. Just the fact that you’ve managed to contact them might help shift their perspective. Additionally, I often find that ancestors who are uncomfortable with the idea of tarot are more willing to use simple oracle cards(2), and many who balk at talk of “offerings” will nonetheless accept a cup of coffee.

It’s also important to reiterate that we all have so many more ancestors than we think about, so even if you can’t or won’t talk to the last two or three generations of your blood ancestors, you can call upon any of ancestors who have done the work of integration and healing necessary to become “Big A” Ancestors: spirits who can and will help and support you in both your magical and your mundane life. These are the ones you should turn to for help, and to keep your other ancestors in line, as you and they work to clear generational trauma, either by conscious effort, or just by you living the best life you can.

When you’re beginning to work with the Dead, you need to come to the table with an open mind, rather than preconceived notions, which may limit your ability to reach the Ancestors who may be the best fit for you. I often hear people say “none of my ancestors were queer” but I find it almost impossible to believe that none of our ancestors were queer, even in the modern period. No one was bisexual? No one was asexual? No one was gay or trans but closeted? And that same line of reasoning works for “they would all tell me I’m going to burn in hell for doing witchcraft”. Really? None of your ancestors ever practiced folk magic of any type? Don’t judge your entire lineage by the living members of your family! You may be surprised who you find when you reach out.

For example, I was in a ritual (led by others) a few years ago that called on a number of different Goddesses that are associated with Crones or Death, and during it we were told to reach out to our ancestors, and I had a sudden wish to meet someone, anyone, who “would recognize their craft in my own.” As much as I try not to have expectations, I did sort of expect someone from my Irish or Scottish family lines, considering how much of my craft involves the Fair Folk, but instead Baba Yaga showed up in her chicken-legged hut, and beckoned me inside where I met an Ancestor I now call “Babcia L”(3), a cunning woman and herbwife from the Slavic side of my family instead. While I have a vague idea of the geographic location and century she lived in, I have no idea what her days of birth or death are, so while I honor most of my Beloved Dead (those whom I knew in life) on their birth and death days, I decided to honor my Babcia L on her name day instead, which is a customary day of celebration in a lot of Eastern European countries.

It’s also worth mentioning that the Ancestors you honor don’t even have to be blood relatives. They could be pioneers in your field, trailblazers who began the activism you’re continuing, artists whose art inspires your own. A lot of deceased celebrities become folk heroes, and I think that’s how it has always worked, in ancient Greece and also today. One of my friends, Ron Padrón of White Rose Witching, has a great blog that does regular Queer Ancestor spotlights, and it’s been super inspiring for people who normally shy away from ancestor work due to bad experiences in their family of origin. Honoring your ancestors shouldn’t have to be painful or triggering; you can have boundaries with the Dead just the same as we have boundaries with the living.

I agree with the assertion in Beckett’s second blog, that the Dead have things to be doing: the work of integration and healing and sorting themselves out, and whatever else is necessary. That they are “busy” would make a certain amount of sense for why they are sometimes hard to reach. I also believe in reincarnation, and that some of us will reincarnate repeatedly in the same family line; that makes sense to me, and fits somewhat with what I’ve experienced. However, when we have these discussions about who the Dead are, and whether they’re a Higher-Self/Soul wearing a mask or if the personality itself is somehow surviving, while I see lots of discussion of a multiplicity of souls (which is my general impression given my experiences, but I’m agnostic as to how many souls and what sort of system), I don’t normally see much discussion of one thing I think is absolutely crucial to our understanding of the Dead and how they may or may not change: mythic time.

I do not believe the Dead and the lands of the Dead flow in time the same way that we do in our mundane world. I think it’s entirely possible that when we are contacting one of our Beloved Dead, known to us well in life but passed on, the whole time they are watching us and interacting with us and coming to our altars which for us is decades, may be but a few moments to them. And the reverse could be true as well: they may spend what seems to them an eon learning to integrate and heal in order to help their descendants, and then when they finally emerge from that work to speak with us and guide us, we perceive it as only a few months since their passing. And those two examples are only of two timelines in parallel relationship: we may also have to consider that time is not linear in the Otherworlds, that there many not be what we’d recognize as a clear progression of time.

I see more discussion about mythic time when we speak about the Gods: most of us have probably heard the questions about how someone can honor two Gods at the same altar when we have lore about a quarrel between Them, and perhaps seen someone answer that the two also have stories where They are allies, and that their UPG leads them to believe that despite the stories, the two Gods are contented to receive offerings together. Time does not constrain the Gods — they move through it or outside of it as they please — and I believe the same can be said for both the Fair Folk and the Dead.

It can be difficult to think of time as something flexible and maybe even optional, instead of something abstract but concrete and unyielding, but I think when working with spirits generally and the Dead in particular, we need to release our grip on the “timeline”. As I’ve been known to quip: time is fake, ya’ll! Just do the work that needs doing.

Image for this post is of part of my home Ancestor shrine, featuring a resin skull shaped candle holder with glass insert, a black glass with a skull image on it, a few pieces of jewelry, a funeral card, and a roll of necco wafers.

Notes:

1. Spae is a verb in Middle English and Scots meaning “to see, predict, or foretell” and by spae-craft here I am referring to the practice of rituals done to receive wisdom from the Dead, derived from the Hrafnar tradition as outlined in Diana Paxson’s “The Way of the Oracle”, and modified slightly by my teachers when they founded the Potomac Seidr Guild Ondvegisulur.

2. I’ve used the Vintage Wisdom Oracle with good results, but I’m also developing a deck of my own: simple cards with words like “Compassion”,
”Regret”, and “Legacy”.

3. “L” here is an initial to stand in for the name I call her, but I did not want to share her whole name this publicly.

Hedgewitch: How I Describe My Magical Craft

I mentioned in a previous post that I tend to refer to my magical practice as hedgewitchery, and myself as a hedgewitch, but I thought it would be useful to go into that in more depth in this new blog post.

So, what do I mean when I call myself a hedgewitch? What is it I do ?

This: I practice folk magic to balm and bane, I divine for omens, I truck with spirits, I cross the hedge to walk the worlds, and I dabble in herbs.

FOLK MAGIC

A lot of my magical practice draws on folklore and folk magic traditions, and incorporates the materials I have around me in a way that some might call traditional witchcraft. I use pieces I’ve learned from family and friends, or invented myself, with what bits and bobs I had on hand or could easily acquire: paper or yarn, candle or salt, herb or stone. I read about other witches’ practices, I talk to my peers, and we inspire each other to use materials or magical technologies in ways that solve the problems in front of us. Most of it is highly personal and highly intuitive, often with guidance from spirits. I have a couple of pretty tools (a brass bell, a copper mug, a pillar of quartz, an engraved wooden spoon) but most everything also has a very practical purpose. I love the look of a fancy wand as much as the next magpie, but I’ve never really used ceremonial tools with any regularity, and I rarely do magic in a manner that requires an altar set just-so. In fact, many of my most “complicated” workings are done almost entirely in trance.

BALM AND BANE

Healing and hexing are two sides of the same coin, in my view. I can heal with darkness, I can curse with light, and in fact I have an upcoming workshop for the NoVA Pagan Moot on exactly that. I am trained in several modalities of energetic or spiritual healing, and I combine them intuitively for those who seek my services. But just as poison in the right dosage can be medicine, a medicine in the wrong dosage is often a poison. Non-consensual or inexpertly targeted healing can cause harm, and sometimes a binding or a banishing can twist someone’s fate so that they’re heading in a more positive direction. Magic is complicated, consent matters, and every effective spell has consequences, intended or not. I try to do more good than harm, but if I’m between a rock and a hard place I will use every tool in my arsenal. I see a lot of people who have a very all-or-nothing mindset around banework, and I don’t think that’s nearly as helpful as having actual discussions about ethics and harm reduction, and us each figuring out our own personal boundaries.

DIVINATION

I am an eternal student of divination: I keep learning new forms, and I keep going deeper with the forms I am already proficient with. I practice several types of cartomancy, I read ogham staves and rune stones, I take omens taken in the wild from the flight of birds, and I sometimes even turn to modern technological omens like shufflemancy and the rolling of d20s. Not everything works well for me: I’ve never quite gotten the hang of pendulums or spirit boards, for instance. But I am proficient enough in many forms that I have enough confidence in my skill to offer these services for money, and the reviews I get back are extremely positive. I use my tools to divine the future, the past, the present—to illuminate anything that is shrouded, to look around corners, to answer what-ifs as best I can, knowing as I do that things are always in flux. I use these tools to speak with and to get messages from spirits of many kinds, both for myself, and on the behalf of others.

SPIRITWORK

I have deep relationships with two pantheons of Deities: the Tuatha Dé and the Vanir. I am also deeply entwined with the Álfar and with the Daoine Uaisle, through the Fairy Queen I serve. I maintain relationships with my local Good Neighbors, Nature Spirits, and Land Wights where I live, where I visit and practice, and where I travel. I honor my Beloved Dead, and those Ancestors (of blood or of path) who appear to guide and to help me. There are spirits in my household; they are my allies and my companions, my guides and my guardians. I also maintain cordial relationships and open lines of communication with many of the Deities and other tutelary spirits of my human-incarnate friends and associates. Most of my magical work involves these many types of spirits; I do workings with them, for them, because of them, on their behalf, or at their request.

HEDGECROSSING

Hedge-crossing, hedge-riding, journeying, pathworking, world-walking: whatever you may call it, I use these to refer to the act of travelling in spirit to the Otherworlds. This is a type of trancework, and the one I use most often. I slip between this world and an Other to see spirits more clearly, to converse with them, or to take a look at the landscape and flows of energy. I travel to visit spirits I know; I travel to seek those I have not yet encountered. I go seeking answers for myself and for others, and I bring answers back in words or images, scents or feelings. Sometimes I wander the worlds for the sheer joy of it, the ecstasy of spirit-flight. From time to time I go walking in my dreams, but most of my wanderings are waking visions.

HERBALISM

This is the one area that I most wish to have additional education in. I am familiar with some herbal remedies for common things like colds, scrapes, and bruises; I know remedies for menstrual cramps. I have deeper education in a couple of chronic conditions I am personally dealing with, including migraines, but I would like to take an actual certification programme at some point. For magical uses, I work with herbs and resins a bit more intuitively, mixing flavors and intentions into food, blending oils for scent and resonance. I speak with the plants themselves, and learn what they would teach me. When I need to ground deeply and my usual way is not enough, I go walk the land or else I spend time in my own garden. The cycles of plant growth, of harvest, of weather, of the moon, bring me back into the present, back into balance with the cycles of my own life.

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:

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.

A Call to Action

I want you to know that I hesitated to write this blog, Dear Reader. I want you to know that I have been struggling with it all afternoon and have been turning it around and around in circles in my head because I was afraid of what you might think. Afraid you might think I’m writing this for the fame, for the drama, because I’m paranoid, because I think I’m the ultimate witch. But no. I wouldn’t have written this at all if I hadn’t been called the fuck out by a deck of cards I used to ask Na Morrigna for clarification. “What should I do?” I asked. Do I really need to tell others about the working I’ve done? Do I need to share my UPG? It’s very, very, deeply, woo. I had hoped the answer would be No, that They would tell me I’d done enough in bringing the situation to the attention of a few key groups and networks. But, alas. “You agreed to be our Priestess.” They said. “You agreed to help organize the Warriors.” They said. “So DO YOUR FUCKING JOB.” I didn’t argue. I wrote the blog. Here it is.

Today, I got a news alert from NPR. That is not unusual. The news alert said that Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg had missed a day of arguments. That is unusual. Very unusual. It has never happened before in her entire career. I immediately had a Bad Feeling, and while I initially thought it was a bad feeling of the usual sort, it remained seared into my brain until I had a quiet moment to check in with my gods and guides and as soon as I was paying attention, they roared DO SOMETHING. This was not a normal feeling, this was not a normal occurrence – something beyond the mundane had happened. So, as is my usual inclination, I first sought more information. I did not have much time just then, so my first dive into trance was shallow, only enough to touch base a little deeper with my allies. The message they had for me was fairly clear, though: banework had been thrown, likely by a group as a concerted effort, and not only at RBG, but also at Sotomayor and several members of Congress, particularly concentrating on a few newly-elected progressive women of color. Na Morrigna were also waiting for me, and their message was brief: Activate your Networks.

So, I began to spread the message. I posted the news article and suggestions or requests for curse-breaking, healing, and protective magical workings, in several different places. Practice and study groups on facebook, on my witchy tumblrs, even a few private messages. I kept it close to home, so to speak, within circles where people already know me, and are already more or less familiar with who I am and the work I do. Some people responded back, and one in particular launched immediately into their own investigation and working, and then discussed with me at length the messages they were receiving – many of which confirmed my own.

My own working had to wait until I had enough time to focus, which did not occur until my toddler went down for a nap. (Ah yes, the joys of stay-at-home parenthood.) I began with almost a dozen candles to various deities and spirits, including DC land spirits, the Potomac River, my ancestors, and the ancestors of those targeted, with pleas for help and aid. I’m a devotional polytheist, and that’s where I usually begin. Bast and Sekhmet as Eyes of Ra. Be Chuille and Dinand, the sorceresses of the Tuatha De Danann. The three Morrigna. Apollo. Athena Columbia, Elutheria, Dike, Nike. I pledged, I pleaded, I offered, I cried.

And then I made myself comfortable on my couch, I set up my meditation music, and crossed into the Otherworlds. I began, as I usually do, in the Waystation, my home in the Otherworlds. There is a shrine in that space, a sanctuary in the middle of a sanctuary, where the being I call The StarFlower Queen, the Fairy Queen to whom I am bound, does workings Over There. She joined her powers to what I had begun, and replicated the candles I lit to increase the strength of their call. She also created protection spell candles for those most severely affected by the baneworking, and stuck them in her eternal flame, to keep them ever-burning until such a time as they are no longer necessary.

Then, we spoke to her mother, Be Chuille, and asked what she could do. As we have done before on a smaller scale, Be Chuille used my body – my human, incarnated body – as an anchor in time and space, to help Her move more easily to where work needed to be done. And then move She did: bindings and banework turned to vines in Her hand and then withered, died, and became the damp detritus of the forest floor. This fed the land spirits, who rose to Her call and ate away larger vines wrapped around buildings, and I came to understand how it had been cast. The casters knew where the targets would be (the Supreme Court, the Capitol Building) and cast it there to wait to ensnare the targets when they came by. But I watched Be Chuille remove vines from children, spouses, family members, and supporters as well as representatives – the traps had been set wide and imprecise. (I wondered, then, if that was a side effect of people casting magic with prayer and intent but without the full knowledge of what they are doing.) There were so many baneful ropes, though, and Be Chuille was more focused on removing them from those who had not been directly targeted.

Dinand arrived, then, speaking to the spirit I know as the Lady of the Potomac River, a land spirit I consider to be a local goddess. They discussed the need for a storm, for precipitation to help wash the leftover energy away, and to dissolve any that remained after being removed. When I was back to myself later, I shared that with a fellow practitioner who has a close relationship with Gwyn Ap Nudd and His Wild Hunt, especially as they relate to storms, and they agreed to talk to Him. I was told that Gwyn agreed there was a need for a cleansing storm, and He reiterated a need for human practitioners to do work alongside His own, to tip the balance.

The StarFlower Queen collected me again then, and she began working more deeply on RBG, Sotomayor, Deb Haaland, Sharice Davids, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, Kyrsten Sinema, and perhaps others. I assisted as she disentangled banework from blessing, and drew the banework out, allowing the blessings to move closer to their skin. She snipped the fine threads of banework – my brain supplied the visualization of a scissors – working methodically until she had removed as much as she could easily find. I got the sense that time was distorted – as long as human practitioners do their work in the next few days, we will all be working side-by-side, at the same “time” and in the same “place”. As she worked she began to shine more and more brightly, until she finished and then blossomed into the star that is the reason for the use-name I know her by. What stars do is their own business, but it seemed she was still working on cleansing, just on a grander scale. Dispelling the Glamours Gwendolyn Reece discusses, perhaps. Things distorted beyond my ability to easily recount what I witnessed before she returned to her more normal size and shape.

After that I was handed over to Na Morrigna, as has lately been my position, and They transformed me into one corvid in a flock, swirling in the air, towards I knew not what, at first. When we arrived, however, it became more clear. I saw something that had a humanoid shape and glowed uncannily, and yet seemed not to be a natural being – it felt more like clockwork, like an android, like a computer program. I can only imagine it to have been something like an egregore, yet those are somewhat outside my realm of expertise. Whatever it was, however, it is no more. Na Morrigna gave a battle cry, and we all descended upon it. Corvids, carrion birds, and birds of prey clawed and pecked, while wolves and other four-legged creatures tore with claws and teeth, and the thing was destroyed. Many of the spirit-creatures then ate of the flesh of the thing, which fell into the shape of a horse once mortally wounded. Once they had their fill, the remaining flesh melted into slimy water, now fertility for the soil. I returned to the Waystation, and then I returned to myself, on my couch, my head reeling.

Food became necessary, but was not nearly enough to ground me. My toddler awoke and that helped to focus me some, and when my husband returned home, he assisted more, but I still felt the pull of unfinished business… until I sat down, riffled my cards, and asked the Morrigna if I had done enough, if I really needed to do more.

And the answer to that, of course, is at the top of this post.

Consider this your call to action. Do what you can, be it curse-breaking, healing, protection, storm-calling, or simply lighting a candle and praying for divine assistance. If you have a favorite deity of justice or healing, go to them. If not, ask assistance of the one in your favorite pantheon, or turn to someone I mentioned above. Do what you can, and do it now.

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BALM AND BANE

DIVINATION

HEDGECROSSING

HERBALISM

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