Wrapping Up 2023

It’s hard to believe it’s already the end of the year. I had a lot more that I wanted to write about since summer, but at least I have a good excuse: I’ve been too busy doing all the things to write about them. But it feels important to try now, before the year is over.

Back at Mystic South, I made an agreement to work with Hekate, welcome Her influence, until the end of next May. I’ve known Her for years but never really worked with Her before (though not from lack of invitations and encouragements from Her) because “complicated” is probably the nicest word I could have applied to our relationship before.

I held Her responsible for some bad things that happened and for being the catalyst that for years broke my relationship with my oldest corporeal friend…and She’s admitted that’s a fair assessment. It wasn’t supposed to go that way, but it did and I took the damage and ended up holding the bag. Oops, and sorry. And She harassed my spirits in the Free Court a couple years ago over something that wasn’t Her problem, and they were never in any danger but I don’t like deities trying to mess with them—especially if the only reason said deity knows about them is through me. And She tried to force me to do something after I said never once and punished me for saying no to Her.

The only reason I even talked to Hekate at Mystic South was because my People vouched and a big part of it was asking Her to explain some things. Because those things seemed to add up to an intense, controlling deity who was using me and not prepared to accept a no and I don’t do that. Automatic veto—no matter how excited I was to meet Her and I really, really had been in the beginning. So, if not that, then what?

She said She made a mistake in 2015, went too far too fast, and things blew up in Her face and I got hit by metaphorical shrapnel. And She wasn’t talking to me directly back then because I had enough on my plate the first year or two and she was waiting for a better time and thought She could nudge things just right and then it was too late. She owes a debt and it’s compelled Her to involve Herself sometimes where She would have been better off not and yes, to risk losing any chance of a relationship with me while trying to somehow make things right. And when she had pressured me? She wasn’t trying to force me; She was testing if I was as good as my word and if what She’d heard me Out There was true…it was going to take months or years to wheedle Her way back in enough to ask me a second time without it being harassment, and She wanted to know if it was worth it. So guess I passed, then.

I think it’s still safe to say it’s a complicated relationship, now. She set me up to feel second best and that’s the source of many of my doubts. Telling me upfront She would throw me under the bus if She had to…is that really a good way to start a working relationship, much less a potential friendship? The trouble can be summed up in one sentence that She told me outright once: She wants to be part of my inner circle. We have agreements like that. I couldn’t be a ritual princess of the Free Court and married to Anubis and a liminal freelancer astral witch at the same time if there weren’t some agreements for secrets and grace and understanding and faith there.

You know, I don’t think it’s ever occurred to me until just now to ask why Someone would want that, if they meant it. The amusement of treating me badly and having me overlook it is the BS reason and I’ve been there, but what’s the real one? I can accept I’m an interesting asset to the Otherworlds, a useful ally maybe sometimes since I straddle between here and Out There, but that hardly seems enough to pursue me for years and (mostly) respect my boundaries doing it.

And if that’s all it was, I make allies over truce and agreements are necessary but trust optional. So why would She want it, if this was just about working in the same direction, and why would She keep telling me the truth even about the things that make me more likely to quit with Her?
Maybe that’s the question I should have been asking all these months. Especially since Hekate has done everything She promised. She told me at Mystic South She wasn’t just the Goddess of Crossroads, but also of Crossed Roads…that is, roads that seem blocked. Several of my People are liminal and Openers of Ways and I train with them, but to open a closed or crossed way is sometimes not possible without too much collateral change. She instead offered to show me a way to just slither through the block undetected, without having to break anything down. And I wanted to believe Her but was feeling careful in moderating my expectations.

Only, I can’t deny it’s worked. I’ve gotten more productive things done in the last five months than in the last three or four years. I reopened my Etsy shop after a covid vacation. I went to my first seller event in years and it went great. There was huge stress hanging over me about some changes coming to my life, but She told me to look for the good side, because there’d be one. Then my dad was around and nice, dry weather all fall (which never happens), so I was able to get as much camper work done—yes, still restoring my vintage camper—in that couple months as in the last year and a half or more.

That would have been enough to get my attention but She went further. My other main stress was a source of money ending this month and then I was unexpectedly offered a good-paying job in October by an artist I met and briefly worked for in 2015 who does fused glass art; I was hired part-time for her storefront then, but she offered I could come by the studio to watch and learn other days, and I did. Enough to know I wanted badly to learn this art to add to my shop I was (then) about to open. The storefront unexpectedly closed a few months later and I should have texted or called about still coming by the studio, but anxiety won out and I didn’t. I started MixedMythologies that winter and received from my dad for Christmas that year the most wow gift I’ve ever had: a small glass kiln of my own. Too bad the weird barn-ceiling, wallpapered, in my craft room here was too short and a fire hazard…I never turned it on. It became my incense burner table for eight years.

I never spoke to her after, but my dad knows and my brother works for her husband, and so I heard through the grapevine she was looking to get back in the studio after health and burnout stuff for some years and wanted to hire an apprentice part-time to help with the commissioned art and to teach what she knew—I wouldn’t still be interested, right? I was and the deal ended up that I work 2-3 days a week and get paid fairly and have been allowed to bring in my kiln to the studio and use some supplies learning. It’s the sort of apprenticeship I’ve longed for much of my life and spent the last few years trying to get over hoping for because nobody mentors someone over thirty. But here I am and I’ve learned so much and I’m getting ready to share my first fused pieces in my shop in January. Yay!
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This post has gotten long, and if I had more time maybe I’d divide it up into bite-size thoughts, but there’s only a few hours of the year left. I’m coming into 2024 with opportunities and hope (though I hate to call it that, because it seems asking for trouble), and not quite knowing where all this goes.

What I know is that Hekate has said done things that hurt me, but so far as I know, She’s never lied to me directly. Even when it would have helped Her. What She’s done for me these last few months has changed maybe the shape of my life in a good way. If those things had happened in any different order, maybe She would be part of my inner circle already. I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop, but what if it really is only what She’s asked of me? She has a lot of people, devotees, in the last few years and She wants to protect them as much as She can in this next potentially chaotic or whatever while. I operate in the liminal, in the weeds, where sometimes it’s not so easy for deities to wield their full power. Perhaps I could also be there and help. The thing is, I would have done that anyway and if I have resources maybe I can do better, but…I’d have done it anyway.

I don’t want Her to feel tricked and in any case…this is what the Otherworlds can’t account for about me. They didn’t always know everything, but now they mostly do and can explain how I am and do but not why. That’s why People say They’re so interested, but I just am what I am. It was just a couple weeks ago when I asked questions, Hekate deflected I wasn’t easy to make friends with or agreements that weren’t all about Work. And I don’t know why that’s stuck with me, but it did.

Maybe I have some new things to think about going into 2024, then. Maybe I need to ask myself some questions when I don’t have good or easy answers. Maybe it’ll matter and maybe it won’t.

Anyway, I’m kind of glad to say goodbye to 2023, I think…Happy New Year!