Hello Goddess? It’s Me…

It’s the end of February, and so this is as close as I can get to an anniversary of my agreement to Isis last year to study and learn with Her for a span of four years. (No February 29^th this year.) It feels like a lifetime ago and yet also, almost yesterday.

I’ve felt nervous coming up to it because so many plans ended up derailed last year. I was going to go to the local university’s library to study…then it shut down for the pandemic. I’d planned readings and language studies and then found myself unable to focus and connect in the same ways and levels as before. I was going to buy the book that helped make me pagan and first led me to Her, but apparently, it’s hard to find and out of print so the most affordable one I found online all year was still over $600…more than I could afford.

Uncertain, about a month ago put on music, made small offerings, and asked for Her guidance to understand where things stood.

Pyramid Of Light – I’m growing in spiritual power and awareness and when that happens, it can attract the attention of other beings or forces that—knowingly or not—derail or manipulate or look to use me. Be prepared; I have strength enough and from a center of love and place of compassion and empathy, I can set boundaries and make choices…if only I remember that I can.

Abundance Of Sothis – New channels of abundance or growth are coming and restrictive times are ending. I think this must be spiritually/energetically, because otherwise it’s been opposite all year. There have been things lately, though. Parts of my life that felt pushed off into auxiliary channels of a river seem to be coming back. I’m deepening things with the Beings I love, writing and working more, reaching out in relationships that feel pandemic-hit…I don’t feel abundance yet, but this card seems to say I have to build paths for it first. So maybe that’s good.

Talismans Of Potency – Interesting, because this is the vast majority of what I’ve been doing for a year. I’ve built and consecrated so many things, well beyond my usual artistic stuff. There are some I’m still working on. This card came up also in, I think, the last reading that I did with Isis so it’s a curious bookending, like maybe all of those efforts have been blessed by Her as an area of study even if I didn’t always think of it that way.

Truths Unveiled – This is another theme. I’ve learned to see some relationships and situations, not as they *might* be, but on the merits of what they are and have been. I try to see the best, the hope, the potential, but…sometimes I shut up, ignore, pretend away the obvious too much because when I look at it honestly, the truth doesn’t make me or anyone else happy. But truth still matters.

Power Over Seven Scorpions – It’s about conjuring and acting with control over other forces in my life. “Controlling” them feels like the wrong word…it’s the understanding, knowing, naming so they can’t control me. Understanding the nature of the poisons that do me harm, whether internal or from others, emotional or mental or energetic, so than I can remove them.

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It seems this last year, if not particularly focused on Isis was nevertheless guided and yet seen valuable by Her. She indicated She wasn’t disappointed with my work and progress.

So let Year Two begin!

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I did another reading, same deck for…What Next?

Abundance of Sothis – Interesting, it’s back. A completely different part of the description was what jumped out this time, asking what I wanted to cultivate abundantly. Isis indicated that I’d cleaned out my cobwebs and barriers, things could flow, but I had to now answer where I’d like them to flow and into manifesting or creating what? She said there wasn’t a right answer, just something to think about. And, you know…I kind of hadn’t thought it that way?

Divine Sisterhood – Community (and not gender-specific). At first, I didn’t understand: I have friends but it often feels were on separate journeys with little common ground beside enjoying the company—not anything that looks like a collective, mutual spiritual home being described. And in any case, getting out and meeting people is still a no-go here in pandemic-land, even if there’s a potential end coming into view. But asking for clarification, Isis said this was not about finding or leaving any particular spiritual group right now, but about cultivating an openness to group—and here on this plane. I get it: I’ve had more bad experiences than not and now have a few spiritual friends but wary at best of anything else. I’ve lost most faith in pagan community, except as a way to find the tiny handful of individuals you’ll actually connect with meaningfully in private. Isis has Plans and has always been the one urging me to stay connected, even if I had to stick to the fringes for now. I’m not excited, but if something good is coming…I guess?

Miracle of Isis – Releasing things to Her for healing that’s too great or heavy to do alone. I feel I’m doing well with my personal wounds and traumas for now, but my first thought was maybe then I could release that healing of my ideas and expectations of community to Her? Let Her do some of the heavy lifting the guide the process and see? She agreed that was the offer on the table for me here. I don’t think it’ll be easy, but there’s some thoughts on how and ritual ideas to help in the companion book so maybe I’ll look into adapting some of that to get started.

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It all feels like very practical, day to day work pointed out—no big or exciting change or stuff—but maybe that’s good. This isn’t the whole year, just where to start, and it feels supportive and also very optimistic that opportunities and better days to grow into them are ahead.

Otherworlds Expatriate, Indeed

Well, it’s been another…month? More? Whatever, a while. I’ve been on this long, fascinating paradigm-shifting journey. I hope everyone had a good Imbolc, etc.—and yes, I know that was ages ago now, but mine included some unusual magick and stuff from my Beloveds and spirit family and that was what really brought everything together, so it’s still casting a long shadow for me.

I came into this year burned out and discouraged. Last year, I accepted what Gods and spirits told me—I am who I think and They say I am, an Othersoul, and I have to embrace it, good and bad. Much of the ostracization, loneliness, even abuse and neglect growing up was either direct result or badly exacerbated by that fact: I’m “weird” and that’s not pleasantly quirky but a deep fundamental difference in experience and worldview I didn’t and still oft don’t realize until far too late is not shared. I didn’t deserve bad, but it is because of me. That was difficult, especially as a truth given that I had to just believe but didn’t fully understand the mechanisms behind—but I learned to, proved (to myself, since my People never had doubt) I’d stay the same still, and found how to manage without becoming a recluse or angry misanthrope. Still…this year, I asked Anubis to help me understand, what do I do with that, were there silver linings? I wasn’t sure I could do the same forever, so help me to make sense of why and what now. Finally. Please.

Since I was young, I’ve had a fear of being misunderstood; my (corporeal) parents would assign me thoughts and intentions and motives that were not true and then judge and punish me for them as if they were, over my objections. Saying nothing meant I was guilty, arguing meant I was guilty and a liar, trying to explain after was making excuses for being guilty, and trying to explain before was being defensive and manipulative and therefore guilty. I can’t explain how powerless that felt—and why were the reasons so negative and considered so certain? I lived over two decades terrified on some level that they were right and I was evil and some kind of monster and somehow deserved all the worst I got and just didn’t know it yet.

Anubis said I can’t change the stories people tell, no matter how hard I try to be clear or not do things that could be misconstrued, someone determined to do it will find a way. And why they assign negative is about the stories people tell—stories they cast themselves and those around them in to understand their place in the world. It’s the nature of them and then I refuse to play my part and I’m unapologetic and that’s worse. If I contest my role, it brings into question the whole story and every other role, too, and not just mine. I’d not fully considered that.

It’s made worse that many didn’t choose their roles—another thing I assumed—but often they were shamed, bullied, and beaten into them same as they tried to do to me. So how and why did I resist? Was it not inevitable and just “growing up” the way they thought to be crushed and changed that way? If they had resisted also, was that possible and who would they be now and would they like being it better? I understand why folks would lash out, and more than one has admitted I made them ask questions they didn’t want to, gave them doubts, had them feeling things they didn’t want to, and Anubis says that’s been true more than just for the people who said it to me in apologies over the years.

He also gave me another reason, an unusual one that never would have occurred to me. I do this thing, have all my life, that I’ve called “bridging across.” Beings are complicated and within that, there’s…room. The closest way I’ve thought of to try to explain it is like the idea of “love languages” and how there can be a difference between showing love to someone and making them feel loved, because how that’s communicated might be different? It’s a view/technique like that, but with identity. Out There I am a warrior, a mage, a traveler, a healer, a princess, an outsider, a defender, a learner, a nomad, a spy, etc., more. At any given moment, I can be all of them or any of them or any combination of them in any way and it’s still true. How I configure those aspects, what ratio of those elements I bring to the fore is my own and I’m all those…just not only them.

It’s an Otherworld skill, one cultivated by Anubis, who told me in late 2015 if I wanted to walk beside Him, I must learn diplomacy, and again by my family in the Free Court in 2016-2018 who said to represent them, I must become a negotiator and true yet in that. In another life, before either, my soul mother told me if I was going to survive, I had to learn to play the games. When in this life They began teaching me, it was familiar but still took a couple years to realize how similar it was to what I’d done growing up—only back then it was under duress and stripped of all safeties and/or boundaries—and another couple to begin feeling comfortable I wouldn’t fall back into old bad habits. It’s still a struggle.

It was only after understanding those, Anubis put the final nail in. How do I know that’s what happening, it’s in good faith, there’s more to Beings and they’re making that effort to bridge across, and it’s not just lies and masks and manipulation? I had no idea what He was asking. It’s just obvious. Then suddenly it clicked and I understood. It’s energies, auras, other-senses, more that are simply understood (to me and Them)…but here in this world, they’re not a given. Even those with skills to see might not it if they’d not spent time Out There to recognize this. In that case maybe it doesn’t look like love or caring or effort or a bridge, but real changing that if isn’t the case then it feels like manipulation and lying and thus is easy to assign villainy when it’s only limited and part of the truth. *mind blown*

Then came White Spring (Imbolc to others) and my spirit-family and the Free Court picked up the metaphorical torch. It was weird, because while many rituals vary, *this* hadn’t…until now. There were ties to last year, a trending further into fire than usual, and instructions to me…and they wouldn’t tell me why until afterward. But then came the magick. Enough to show me and share myths and tell stories and not leave me imagining how the things and pieces fit together, but let me see it, feel it, experience it for myself so I could hold onto it.

For a while, I’ve looked at liminality and walking between worlds in my life and thought to be true to it, I had to embrace both sides of the “veil” evenly. Or better yet, find a way to pretzel them into being the same. Now, I no longer believe that; in fact, I think it’s impossible. Who I’ve become in the Otherworlds and who I’ve learned to be here This Side are irreconcilable. I have to choose; I have chosen; there was never any doubt which way I would choose…even if it’s the opposite answer maybe from everyone else I’ve ever met who faced such a question.

Up to now, I’ve had two systems operating in me simultaneously, especially interacting in my day to day corporeal life—my rules (Otherworldly ones, instinctive and/or trained that I use Out There without contradiction) and the rules (those expected of me, despite often falling across and contradicting my own). It’s left me in a constantly-shifting experience of dissociation and dysphoria: interacting corporeally with humans, I lose the ability to fully conceptualize, much less explain, my choices in the Otherworlds and feel doubt over them, and likewise when I’m in the astral, I look back at who I force myself to be in mundane life and it’s absurd, I can’t justify it, and I feel ashamed.

There are hurts and angers and abuses here that I’ve held onto that I’d have hardly batted an eye at in the Otherworlds…but Out There it’s normal and here admitting it’s normal would mark me broken or defective or damaged goods. There’s things here that I’d never accept Out There, but it’s so ordinary here that I not just capitulate to it but internalize it. My Gods and spirits are often equally disturbed and worry for me over those.

But no—my rules are mine. Even if I try to know and understand and evaluate others by their own as often as I can, the judgement of whether I forgive or forget or welcome further into my life is mine and I get to make it for myself, my rules. Even those I deeply disagree or feel hurt by are mostly, in the end, the same question. I have a vast capacity to not like, not ally, not want a beer with, but still not consider an enemy—the Otherworlds taught me that also—but if I have no cohesive way to understand such questions then that’s not good for me.

I honestly thought I’d done this work several times before. I’ve had pieces and I’ve tried. But a part of me always wanted to keep in the middle and not jump entirely one way or, because as soon as I did then I’m a broken failure by the other. My spirits kind of laughed and pointed out: I don’t have to belong or be good at the one I don’t pick. And maybe making the choice isn’t an empty gesture because making it is the choice and a reflection of it, both.

I don’t know if any of that makes sense to anyone else, but it’s huge and shifting to me. I know what I have to do now, know where I am anew, and feel certain of that on a level I still had to work to imagine before. And more, the anxiety I’ve had growing for ten or fifteen years is gone now; I still feel plenty stressed out about specific things, but that awful and vague *just is* sort that’s been hanging over me and growing since I was a teen is the lowest it’s been and…that seems like a good sign.

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I buy/make and wear things for the big damn steps, and this is one of them. I found a fabulous ring, a star ruby surrounded in antlers—and thus reminding me of all the big signs in my magick with the Court and the stories and lessons they told me. (It’s coming from an artist in India so it isn’t here yet, but it’s lovely and I’m excited.)