Liminal Tales

It’s been a while, again. Things have been busy for me the last few months, though.

Years ago, back in 2017 or 2018 (I’d have to look), Anubis asked me into a position with Him. It was a liminal thing. He asked me to be His official consort in the Between…that’s the liminal no-man’s-land that exists between this world and others or Otherworlds and each other. Ish. And I agreed. By that point I’d worked as His magickal counterpart/partner in things that felt so very far above my pay grade, but each time it worked out and went well. So it didn’t seem so far out really.

I took that Work and commitment very seriously, but went into it thinking the titles were more de facto. Titles are cheap in the Between; anyone can claim any title, style themselves any way they please, and no official and centralized authority exists to deny it. Anubis has the strength and magick and respect to hold His titles, so if I was working with Him under his auspices then it made sense there be honorary things.

The night came and I’d made, under direction from Anubis, all these symbols and jewelry and tools (so maybe I should have seen it going somewhere, but it’s what I do as an artist and so I saw it in that context) and I wore them and was dressed up in this ceremonial garb. And thus I gave my word publicly in the astral and Anubis presented me Out There…as His wife, His Sacred Consort, and His Sacred Queen in the Between. I think that’s what it feels like to be hated, or to be despised at the very least. There were a few beings happy or maybe just polite, but mostly it felt like hurricane-force wind that sounded like “who the $#!% is this?” and/or “how dare He?” blowing over me. I still sort of feel chills remembering standing there holding His hand so tight, hoping they couldn’t tell I was shaking at that moment.

In the days that followed, I did the Work as I understood it and Anubis had additional things He wanted me to do and learn. And maybe a week after, some spirits Out There attacked me and a couple spirit friends intending to do awful things to us for my sake—and almost worse, it was in a public place in the Between and not one of the other forty beings present intended to raise a finger to intervene—but I fought them off and Anubis dealt with the ones I didn’t. So, I realized He was hoping for or even expecting me to take a larger view of my position and that everyone else was treating me as if it were already so. So…maybe it was and I didn’t quite known it yet. I wasn’t tricked or anything: He told me the titles, described the job, did everything but give me a checklist and daily schedule. The trouble is, I’d spent just enough time in the Between to know how fleeting and ephemeral and hard to pin down things like authority and sovereignty can be Out There and so I didn’t misunderstand the scope of my job in relation to Anubis’s so much as the scope of His that I was joining.

There was this strange deck of cards Anubis  had me get that was unlike any others I’ve seen, were read completely differently, had odd meanings and associations, and I received messages once He’d taught me how…but I had no way of understanding them, no context. I was still just learning how things worked in the Between, didn’t know most of the major players, had hardly been anywhere but the Free Court’s moving camp and his caravanserai fortresses Out There. He had asked for and received my oath and given me titles under His auspices to a job I simply qualified for, and I wasn’t prepared to half-it and didn’t deserve them until I saw and knew and understood to right by them.

Anubis agreed with me: if I didn’t enough to do it right, then I was correct I shouldn’t be doing it yet. And He sort of…suspended it for a while. He didn’t take anything back, but it was like it was made mostly dormant except for my offerings in support of Him, and then I spent the next year or two involved in other Otherworld things that had been in the works since 2015 and 2016 and had to happen the way they did. And yet, almost every step I took and choice I made and thing I learned felt like it was further into the liminal aspect of my myself and my path. Then 2019 was all about what was to come after and I learned a lot that year and all of it trending still toward the liminal.

In the waning part of the year, Anubis asked me if I still meant what I’d said before. Did I still want to see the Between, really see it, get to know it…all of it, good and bad. I said of course. He said I knew enough—now—to try to do that. Beginning January of 2020, he would put my name back Out There and make it known in the Between I was under His authority but could be called upon separately, myself. He made sure I understood that I could call upon Him anytime, anywhere Out There, for any reason, and He would intervene and answer, but otherwise I’d be working on my own. The only way to get to know the places and people of the Between was to get Out There and get to know them, the only way for them to get to know me was to do it out from under His shadow, and the only way to really learn the parts of the work I didn’t already know was do them.

So that’s what I’ve spent the last four years and change doing, that’s the dreamwalking that’s happened at least two-thirds of every night since. I’ve seen so much and learned so much, and I’ve discovered a lot of things about myself, too. Back in February of this year, Anubis told me it was time to come back and do this together again, instead of just in the same direction. During the eclipse recently I rededicated myself and all my tools and on April 30^th, He sort of presented me Out There again after the years…only this time I was recognized.

Honestly, it was harder than I’d thought it would be to come back to the official Work and the titles and everything. I was a lot more comfortable thinking of myself as the nobody who could help out sometimes that I was pretending to be. (I ended operating up under three personas: one that was known, one that was who I was back in another life when I secretly did work in the Between, and one that was meant to be as hard to recognize as possible for the times the work demanded not drawing attention; eventually the fact the first two were one person was known, as well as the fact there was a shadowy third who moved under the radar.) And there were times I was told the only reason they felt they could call for help was because I was just a spirit not so different maybe from them. I don’t want that to change. But they had four years to know that’s what I believe, too, and so far things are mostly the same except sometimes Anubis and I travel and Work out there together.

The Work itself has been terrifying and exhausting and I could never tell anyone all the things I’ve experienced, but it’s not something I think I could ever give up. It’s a continuation of who I chose to be before, only this time it doesn’t have to be a secret. And I’ve heard what spirits said and seen how their energy and emotion change when they realize someone came; they called and wished for help, sometimes without any real hope it would work, only it did. I get it: I lived as a soul for a long time Before in despair and for years in this life the same. I remember what it’s like to wish or pray for help long after you have any belief left just because you don’t know what else to do and it’s like one last act of defiance to pretend the universe is the sort of place where if you cry for help you might get it. In some small way, I get to be a little for others what Anubis and the Free Court were for me and I get to do it alongside Anubis and with the blessing of the Free Court. And that’s everything.

Another Spring Beginning

Hope everyone had a happy Imbolc, etc. if you celebrate! My White Spring rituals went well and I made a bit of a weekend out of it. Last week, I was definitely feeling the stirring of springtime vibes already, and so I’m in agreement with a lot of the predictions around that it’ll be an early spring this year. And when I traveled for my astral rituals, it didn’t seem as cold and wintery still Out There as if does during the holiday sometimes.

It was a lovely, nice ritual with my spirits. The energy seemed a little more chill and lighthearted than some years, like the spring vibes were already rising and the magick was maybe a bit more celebratory of that than focused of helping it wake up. It’s been very frosty or even snowy more years Out There than here this side (since I live in the South), but this year even in astral it was only crisp and clear, but not icy.

The only little thing that was really unique this year was that I used cedar for the evergreen in my wreath of greenery and candles. This is the eighth White Spring I’ve celebrated with the Free Court—which is wild, the first one still feels like yesterday—and for all the other seven, I’ve used Leyland cypress branches because the cedar trees here already had pollen starting to come out by the beginning of February…but those trees I’ve always used before have gotten so large now that the bottom branches within reach have become very thin and died back since ones higher up get all the sunlight. And I’d noticed last year not all the cedar trees in the yard pollinate, at least not now. I’m not sure if it’s one plant vs another (like we have several redbud trees but only half produce seeds) or if it’s different types of cedar, since I know by shapes and growth patterns there’s at least two and I think three growing here.

This tree I have a standing relationship with and have harvested from before for other reasons (to make infused oils, etc.), but it’s only become big enough that I was comfortable asking it for cuttings since a few years ago and especially for as many and as large branches as needed for a White Spring wreath crown. But it’s certainly become large enough now.

So I asked my spirits this year if it would be alright to switch and they answered of course; after all, it was originally cedar they had asked for and any evergreen is fine. And the tree was willing to oblige me as well and I agreed to only clip from the side toward the driveway where a few of the branches have gotten long enough to get smacked by side mirrors while backing out and so were probably going to end up trimmed a little anyway.

It was a small thing, a tiny change, but what I didn’t realize was how much stronger scent cedar has than Leyland cypress. And cedar is a scent I particularly associate with my spirits…for years, sometimes when they turn up there’s this very distinctive lovely scent and cedar isn’t all of it, but it’s the most recognizable part. Like a tree just appeared in the room at the same time they did. So it felt like that helped pull me in and get the mentality right for the ritual this year in a special sort of way.

I also blessed my garden for the coming year, since White Spring is the opening of the garden and garden planning season for me. I have some plants I’ve (hopefully successfully) brought through the winter and things I’m planning to start from seedlings or bulbs or small plants can be begun anytime for about at the next six weeks, but the holiday is always when I start seeds. There’s only one thing I want from seeds this year and that is catnip. It’s been in my garden every year since I began in 2016 in honor of the Court—it was the only thing that survived from the first couple years, but my plants died in December, 2022 when it dropped into single digits here and so even protected and brought in…it was a workspace insulated and attached to the house but with minimal direct control and everything froze anyway. And last year I tried, but all the seedlings failed.

This year, I’m trying to take no chances. This is the thing I want to come up most in my garden. I went and bought seeds the day after the holiday while the energy was still up. I bought three times the seeds I did last year and I’ve looked up conditions and have a plan to try to replicate that first couple years more than I did last year. I’m watching the weather—less for the seeds, but because my empty pots of soil were outside and it just rained so I’m waiting for an ideal moisture level now to actually do the planting. It should happen this week, I think, so *fingers crossed* for that. And then I’ll be watching them very carefully because it’s something I grow both to honor certain spirits and for me to do all kinds of things with and I really missed having any to harvest last year.

(And this was the song of the day…not sure how Greensleeves ended up as the tune of White Spring for me, but it’s been like this for years. I have a ton of different versions, some solemn, some fun and playful, everywhere in between, on different instruments—and every year at least one speaks to me and ends up on repeat while I made the wreath or turned down low where I travel for the ritual. This was this year’s version.

For whatever reason, I always weirdly hear it now as a love song from the winter to the spring or the warmer months, that they’re not enemies and winter isn’t something to be cast off, and maybe those first late winter blooms are a delight to winter personified just as much as spring personified because winter is just another part of the cycle.)

Rising Spring

Hope everyone had nice Imbolc, etc. celebrations! I had a lovely holiday (and then Full Moon on its tail, since they fell rather close together this year) with my spirits to welcome the first hints of thawing of spring.

Actually, though, it’s been feeling like spring here since about the second week of January. At the end of December, it was quite cold (it was down to 8 degrees F one couple of nights, and I can’t remember it ever being in single digits during my lifetime), so the joke’s been we used up our allotment of winter in that week and so had no choice but to move on to spring early. And energy-wise, that hasn’t felt too far off the truth.

The sun’s been back out after such a gray and dark November and December and while there’s been some cold days, it’s March sort of cold and not January and February cold. And since there have been so many clear days, it’s been obvious already how the days are getting longer again.

The daffodils are blooming, and I’ve come to really associate them with this early spring holiday that I celebrate because it’s all about the first thaw, the first green, the first sprouts and here—that’s the daffodils. Always. They bud about the last week of January, bloom at the beginning of February just when I’m working the ritual and then stay lovely and blinding yellow for at least a couple of weeks. And it really doesn’t seem to matter what the weather’s doing, they bloom at exactly the same time every year, regardless of whether it’s in the 50s and 60s like this year or I literally have seen them bloom anyway through several inches of snow, as well. It’s brilliant.

I did my ritual (and once again, did not set my hair on fire, so yay me!) and it was sort of quiet this year, but went well—and in the odd tradition of so many of my rituals, felt like things just worked out. It was supposed to be pouring rain the whole week, which isn’t wonderfully suited for going out the day-of and trimming evergreen for my wreath of candles, but then it just…was cloudy and misting, but not raining. They dried out perfectly set near a heat vent.

And I was actually a bit proud of myself: this is the first year it’s rained at all here on the day of the ritual since I started doing it in 2016, so I had to make sure I trimmed enough evergreen by eye. If I ran out putting it on my wreath, then there wouldn’t be time to dry more, but since it’s something I ask the trees for each year, it would feel disrespectful to cut more than needed or waste any of what I was given. But I cut exactly the right amount with no extra layering on and no thin places. So, yay!

Lastly, I lit my own candle from the ritual afterward and let it burn down. This is the one that I bury under my garden to dedicate it and bless it for the new growing year and now I can start making up my plans.

Happy early spring, everyone!

I’m Still Alive

*Just in case you were wondering after my unexpected hiatus from writing here over the last few months.

It wasn’t something I planned, but what began as a long weekend to myself to spend with my Gods and spirits turned into four months of magick and shadow work and remembering past-life shenanigans. I had thought I knew everything from Before, or at least the important stuff; I don’t have a hundred past lives to sift through, just the single long one that this incarnate life is continuing. But it seems even Back Then, as in this lifetime, I learned to keep secrets and find a way to be myself—even if that meant doing it undercover, even from myself. And the truth has always been there, I just had to be ready to finally see it again.

It was in a name I’ve remembered since I was three or earlier and knew meant something, and when I finally looked it up, it was built in the same way and languages as I create my names for dealing with Fae and strangers now, only the roots are a few thousand years old. It was in the spirits who first trained me in magick beginning when I was five or six and I took an oath (under supervision from Anubis-in-disguise) in 1999/2000 at ten. That never made sense, looking back, when neither the spirits nor Anubis usually allow such commitments so early, nor why it didn’t feel like other spiritual/astral oaths I’ve taken since…unless it was an affirmation of an oath I’d already taken that still bound me. It was the signs of that oath I wore from then on, even when I had to hide them or got in trouble, and still wear now. It was in a Place I knew, their Place and I remembered being there; I was never talented at sketching, but I saw it so clearly as a kid that I drew unlike anything else I’ve ever drawn. It was in a magick weapon I remembered, dreamed about, that I found not one but two toy proxies when I was young and slept with them beside the bed. And it was in “disguises” I practiced to not forget them in case I needed them again.

It’s been so much a part of me, something I just knew so clearly since I was so young that I’d convinced myself it couldn’t be real, had to be “fairy tales” People told me or that told myself from the overactive imagination everyone insisted I had in childhood. When I experienced my remembering of life Before back in 2015, these bits didn’t fit and so I took that as proof. Even after Anubis told me twice with Big Damn Signs in 2016 it *was* real after all, I believed even if there was an original grain of truth…the idea that I belonged in that story was wishful thinking, a person mythology I’d made up as a kid to give myself hope. And so I didn’t want it to be true, because the first step to accepting it would be relinquishing that personal mythology.

Only…that’s not what happened. It was true, is true, and my life Before was just a little more complicated than I thought. I had a secret identify, secret life, and only Anubis ever figured it out.

—-

In some ways, it changes nothing. My path is still tough, I have my doubts and hesitations, I’m still intimidated by the faith my Gods and spirits have in me—even if I’ve been everything they believe me to be Before, that doesn’t mean necessarily I can do it and be it again now. In other ways, it changes everything. It means I was something on my own; I have chosen who I want to be, more than once now, and even without remembering have chosen the same each time. It means the struggled on my path are my own, and my Gods and spirits were always telling the truth when They insisted that They’ve honed and tempered but never made me anything that I wasn’t already: I am what I am, and not what They’ve made me. It undermines my oldest and deepest fears about the Otherworlds and my deity and spirit relationships that I’ve never quite been able to shake off.

It’s not easy to accept the reason for most all the deepest, most painful experiences and losses is my own choices—and specifically, choices I would not take back. I’m not sure whether to be glad I’ve not simply been a relentlessly constant fuck-up always or sad that outside of changing who I am, there is not and never has been any way to fix everything, after all. Maybe it doesn’t matter, if what I’ve learned from these revelations and working through them is that this is who I am and while I wish things were different…I don’t wish I was different.

—-

Anyway, I guess I’m back now and that’s what I did on my summer vacation.

Holiday Weekend, Part II: May Day 2022

I didn’t quite get this finished yesterday like I had hoped, but the second part of my nice ritual weekend:

After my celebrations with Anubis on Saturday, Sunday brought May Day and Beltane/Beltaine, etc. It seems to have brought summer with it, since I saw the first slithery friends out over the weekend, and now it’s almost ninety degrees here.

It became kind of an all-day affair. I hadn’t bought my main ribbon yet: I knew my intention for the year was but not what color to use to represent it and was teetering between several but none felt quite right. When I went to the craft store, I found a light new-growth sort of green that was in between my three maybes of green, yellow, and white so that seemed perfect in the end.

I also bought some thinner red ribbon. The last several years I’ve braided red and crystal white beads into the long braids I keep in front of my ears, but this year I made beads that reminded me of Anubis to wear instead—so I wrapped the ribbon into my other braided braids to match my ribbons-and-flowers crown.

I added my red and white ribbons in the tree over my garden (and outside of my craft-room window, which means I get to see them for as long as they stay up, yay!) and that was great fun.

And I also wound my intention ribbon around the trunk and so—fingers crossed. It felt like it worked, like there was good magick and energies happening, so maybe the thing I want will be made manifest as the year goes on. I hope so!

Later in the evening I traveled for rituals and things Out There and just spending time and that lasted until the wee hours of the next morning. It was lovely, and felt like a continuation of the theme from Anubis of my letting go and opening up and connecting, even if it’s just a moment and afterwards the fun is over and you have to go back to “real life” again.

The only thing I didn’t do was have a little cauldron fire, because there was a chance of rain all day (even though it didn’t happen). My cauldrons don’t like rain and can’t be left out and need an hour or so cool before they can be put away, but there were astral bonfires when I traveled and I had my candles and incense all weekend this side that had fire energy, so I didn’t feel like I missed out much there.

I’ve kept my hair ribbons (since it’ll be rebraiding day come the weekend) and been keep up the fiery and summery colors this week, hoping I could hold on to more of that energy. I don’t know that it’s working, this year sucks, but every little bit of joy, hope, inspiration seems precious and worth holding onto as long as possible. Just for a couple of days, it felt like I could to step back from everything else and just remember good things still exist somewhere, and…worth it. ❤

The Arrow Thief III

I really didn’t expect there would ever end up being any more to this weird story, it would just be one of those strange things I could never fully explain, but there’s now a new chapter… (Part I and Part II.)

Recently, walking through the yard, I glanced down and this arrow that vanished two years ago mysteriously was just there lying on the ground, obvious as anything. It was exactly in the area I looked for it, walked a grid, raked over, after it vanished two years ago. It was right there by the footpaths walked all the time, and it hadn’t been there before.

I made a libation and offering of chocolate at the edge of the woods to the spirits who live in behind my house down by the creek. They didn’t take the arrow and I don’t think had anything to do with bringing it back, but I wasn’t sure and had promised if it returned and they helped me to it, I would. They had no answers, though, and didn’t seem to know what I was talking about.

The next day, I went for a drive around the reservoir nearby and put Out There if Anyone had any answers or explanations I was listening and would like to know. I was answered and also Anubis came by and helped to confirm so I knew I was understanding it all.

—-

Two years ago, all I was sure about was the arrow had been taken by an ancient and powerful Being who was native to this land, to North America, not local but passing through on a storm-wind, and I had somehow attracted its attention. I was told the same Being returned it the day before I found it, in the evening, and Anubis nudged me: that’s the weather was so weird. For a few hours, it had become unseasonably cold, whistling gusty winds, very dark clouds but silver-edged, and a strong power-of-nature sort of energy vibe—and none of it was in the forecast.

As for why…since I bought my camper, I had been thinking how I might incorporate respecting local spirits when on the road if I wasn’t in one place where I could get to know them over time. Especially around early 2020 it was on my mind because without my own land I could mark out, I’d decided the best idea was to build protections and magickal wards into the camper itself, in the walls and stuff, as I restored it. That was also around the time I started incorporating more astral weapons and ritual tools and defensive talismans in my practice and figure if I was going to be driving around in the spiritual equivalent of an armored vehicle full of weapons, I needed a strong practice to acknowledge and honor the spirits I crossed paths with peacefully so they’d know I wasn’t looking for any trouble.

That felt complicated by the fact that I’ve road-tripped twice through the west of this country and even then, before I was pagan, I was very aware of the energies and presences there as old as the rocks themselves, Their power and sway over that land. But those are closed traditions and not part of my path, and I don’t want to be more an unwelcome intruder than they already see me as—and they do—yet it felt even more problematic and wrong to simply ignore such spirits because I didn’t know quite how to approach them. I was asking and meditating around the same time all this started.

I don’t know if that Being came looking for me because questions got back or was just passing through and they were swirling around me enough to get attention, but taking the arrow was in response to that. It had my energy in it and I was watched after to see Who turned up when I called and then seems it was used over the last 2+ years by that Being and Others to conduct a “background check” on me. They spoke to Anubis, Wepwawet, the pixies in the woods behind my house, found out more about the Free Court, spoke to the Faery Court of Alabama I’d met while traveling a few years back (yes, lol, there is such a thing; they live in Talladega National Forest…long story), even checked with spirits I’ve worked with in liminal shenanigans.

Apparently, I passed.

So the arrow was returned to me now that that’s over. That fulfills the other end of the offering bargain struck the day it disappeared to get it back I kept seemingly to no avail and I was told my ideas for how I might respectfully honor them as an outsider are acceptable and They’ll look for that. I was also instructed this arrow was not to be returned to my quiver, but decorations added to commemorate what’s happened (I was shown a mental image and a description), and when my camper is done, I’m to hang it inside over my door. Not protection, exactly, because this isn’t one group and there isn’t anyone who can promise that absolutely, even if They were so inclined…more a sign, by which I can be recognized and various spirits will know I’ve crossed paths before and it went well.

There’s been one last thing, negotiated by Anubis for a pendulum. The snowflake obsidian point was originally on a pendulum I made for Him but it never felt right so it sat on His altar for years and was never used; the little disk was from a project I did for Him where it was left over and they’re combined with obsidian like I was asked for in offerings the day the arrow disappeared.

This is not usually a pendulum I could or would make: in my own experience, I’ve found it a type of divination especially susceptible to hijacking if left open-ended. (That’s why I have like thirty different ones, all dedicated to specific People or Groups; that doesn’t always stop it but does make the pendulum act bizarre if Someone Else is attempting it, enough to put it down and use some other way.) But that’s not possible here because, again, They aren’t one group, and They and I both are agreeing the kind of standing relationship that would necessary for that sort of dedication, we’re not pursuing. Anubis says He can facilitate this though, and keep a clear line of communication open for the confirmations of offerings or potential future signs.

—-

Talk about weird. Maybe this doesn’t sound like much to someone else, but after having felt the unwelcome before, more than once, this bemused acceptance I’m sensing now for my traveling respectfully and being allowed to do so freely, all in peace, feels a bit like winning the lottery or something. And I like how even after all this time, there is a reason and answers. I’ve often had to wait a long time, but it’s always encouraging to find that in the end, understanding.

Spring Beginnings

Hope everyone had a nice Imbolc, etc. I’ve been busy lately, but mine went well. It seemed to confirm energies I was picking up these last couple of months that whatever the weirdness has been going on the last year+ in my Between rituals has ended and shifted back to normal—finally, yay!

Preps started a bit early this year because my garden needed a lot of work. It’s dedicated to my spirits and I started it as a learning/devotional aspect of my practice with them, so it has a place in my rituals and a lot of the cycles I follow are from rhythms of growing they keep in their own growing out in the Otherworlds. And the Free Court is nomadic, so there’s bending room for my climate; even though it’s a similar cycle of rituals we follow to the Wheel of the Year and vague traditions of old European agriculture, it seems to work out anywhere in the northern hemisphere north of the tropics (which I don’t know enough about to say anything). I live in the southeastern US but I’ve seen documentaries of people gardening in England, Alaska, and Arizona where details are all different, but I still see shades of my ritual rhythms in what they’re doing. It’s a comfort for me, as someone who will likely live other places and within a couple more years hopefully have finished restoration and travel projects to be mostly nomadic myself, to feel like the magick is still going to work and be relevant and that the success or failure is not in changing everything but in the space between the rituals and reading the weather and seasons in the area to find a balance somewhere in there.

This year was a big rebuild of the garden wagon. I started it in 2016 with an expanded metal garden cart I bought and cedar planks…but the cedar was waterlogged and the burlap and woodchips I used beneath the soil had rotted away over the years where I’d lost about two-thirds of my soil depth by last year’s planting. I cleaned it completely out and was lucky the wood, once dried out, was not as damaged as I thought and could be reused. And instead of burlap and stuff, this time I lined it with aluminum screen. It should still let the water out so it doesn’t flood, but let very little soil out and hopefully also protect the couple places where the expanded metal was showing some damage. Then I made a custom garden blend of soil by buying several types that matched up to what I wanted to plant.

It was really important to get it done before the beginning of February, because in White Spring (our version…ish of Imbolc), after the big candle ritual there’s one for each of us lit from the fire and a tradition of then doing your own magick and projects while it’s lit to add your energy to it as well. Afterward, when it’s just I tiny stub of wax, each of us buries that under the soil of our garden wagon to dedicate and bless it for the coming year with energy and safety and bounty. So, it had to be done before that so I’d have a place.

As usual, I had my main Otherworlds ritual—also known as Don’t Set My Head On Fire Day with my ritual crown of candles. This is the first year I’ve felt like I really had figured out perfectly my technique for cutting and trying the evergreen on perfectly, finally. It was the same as always and I never say much more about it than that, but there was a sense of growing and relief and that everything was going to be okay happening in it this year after pushing through for the last couple, which was nice and uplifting.

My project this-side while my candle was burning was planting some seeds. I’ve not had great success from seeds before, but I’m trying again and this time starting indoors earlier until they germinate. *fingers crossed* And this year I decided to branch out. I have limited space and so have previously stuck just with herbs, but I really wanted to try some veggies…so several kinds of peppers (I love spicy) and some small cucumbers, short okra, tiny salad tomatoes, and some bunching onions. I made some tiny mini-greenhouse-ish boxes for them and repurposed a tiny spray bottle for watering. I’m also considering trying to add some potatoes and maybe buying a strawberry plant but still researching to decide on those additions in the next couple of weeks.

Lastly, I think I mentioned a plan but never doing it last year, but I transplanted my surviving plants out of the garden wagon before it got cold in the late fall. I have two big pots of catnip and one of rosemary, a small one of flat parsley, and another small one of either lemon balm or sweet mint (but I kept mixing their leaves up last year and telling by smell and I don’t want to take one of its few winter leaves to sniff and tell…either is good and I’ll know in a few weeks when it starts spring growth anyway. They’ve been living in my half-restored camper (ignore my disassembled taillights in the background, lol) because it’s up from the ground and insulated and then I bring them back out on sunny days so they don’t wilt away as possible, but that’s worked better than I really expected it to over this winter.

Anyway: welcome to the impending imminent coming of spring! Yay!

Fire And Flowers

Hope everyone had a lovely Walpurgisnacht, Beltane, May Day, etc. over the weekend. I began my celebrations with some quiet time with Anubis on the 30^th—it was six years since I took my first oath to Him and we began our relationship in this way, something recognizable as the start of what we have now. It’s funny, most of the time I don’t think about how long it’s been or how far we’ve come until something like this reminds me and there’s always a jolt to remember how differently I thought of Him back then…and of myself, and the relationship, and our places in it and where it was going. It was a small moment this year, but it didn’t feel like it had to be any bigger since it wasn’t a milestone and He’s been around so much this year thus far.

And then I had celebrations with my spirits in the Free Court. I finally got my ribbons right after our discussions around the Equinox: I left those multicolored ones up in the tree by my garden all this time and then added more this holiday and to keep it straight for myself I hung different ones, different width, in bunches of red and white to match the crown of ribbons and flowers I made a few years ago for this holiday.

I wrapped my ribbon for my hopes over the rest of the year and it was the first time in ages I’ve gotten to do it full-scale outside instead of on my altar tree.

Once it was dark, I made a fire in my larger fire cauldron and had some music and celebrated in that way. Like most of my holidays, I traveled back and forth to the astral encampment of the Court and spent some time bi-located as well, but then after the fires burned low I did a deeper sort of experience for the main magick ritual part.

It went pretty well, but it followed in this strange pattern I’ve noticed in ritual holidays this year that they all feel slightly…different? I’d say “off” but that’s too negative? Skewed, maybe? Each one has felt strange and I’ve had an unusual sense of connection with last year, odd since that came up in divinations at the beginning of the year: that 2020 and 2021 were interrelated and there wouldn’t be the clean break I was hoping for but a changing, evolving continuation. (Idk if that’s just us and so a circumstance only of the Court or something about the year itself but my spirits confirmed it is why I’ve been getting strange, not bad, just weird vibes in the rituals this year.)

At the end of everything, I used all the extra energies from celebrating to pour into my garden. After such a promising start, it’s not been doing well since another unexpected cold night and a lot of fluctuating weather, so it needs all the help it can get. Nice temps and a wonderful steady rain blew in last night though—maybe my garden magick is working and it’ll help!

There But For Grace Of Gods…

And spirits. And luck. Change of plan for today as I kick off my “Anubisversary” and Month For Anubis here.

Late last night, the anxiety that built all week and I’d been trying to keep in perspective became crushing. It’s felt like something was wrong, something bad was going to happen, the sky was about to fall, but I couldn’t find a reason. It seemed tied into my writing and I tried to shrug it off as just going back to journals and memories that felt more like a dark chasm I could get lost in if I looked too long than I’d expected after so many years. Allies were watching over me very closely, but quietly and not with any warnings…as if deeply focused on something else.

I tried to sleep, hoping it was emotional exhaustion, but instead received a visit. I wasn’t certain who at first, but they weren’t hiding their identities, quite the opposite: those I made truce with in November 2019 after years of being enemies…and who were about to feature prominently if vaguely/anonymously into today’s planned tale.

They kept me up and I started arguing with them, but they were insistent. Don’t write the thing. Finally, about four in morning, unable to sleep because of them and still having trouble getting through to Anyone Else (maybe because they were loud) I told them under terms of our truce they’re not allowed to harass, harangue, or harm me so unless this was them breaking it, fuck off. No, they were doing this because of the truce: don’t write the thing. It was dangerous, they were trying to warn me. If I told the story now, he would return.

That got my attention. I don’t know why they didn’t just start with that. There’s only one being they’d call “Him” quite that way. There’s two villains in the story I planned to tell; one’s been dead and destroyed over ten years but the other more powerful one who ordered it has only been “gone” a few years and that’s not the same and not as permanent. He has loyal minions who want to bring him back and have tried before.

I called Anubis then not for support but that something was up and got a clear answer: Yes, He already knew and had been looking into it. After that, all was quiet, though there’s nothing like a suggestion the powerful spirit who spent years trying to kill you might be coming back to the Otherworlds to ruin peaceful sleep. This morning, Anubis clarified: it’s true. His minions still want him. Words have power, stories have power, and this story and the energy and intensity it’d have carried would have been power enough to bring him back. Not 100% sure how that’s possible…questions for another day…but Anubis told me enough that I don’t doubt and even if I did, I wouldn’t take the chance.

—-

This is not how I thought Anubisversary would start, one of those days all I can think is what the hell even is my life? I don’t know how to feel. Should I be glad dodging this trouble or disturbed how close the call? Should I be thankful to know the truth or terrified of it? These are the times, I’m just not sure…maybe both.

So now I don’t know how I’m going to honor Anubis this week or month, but I’m starting today with a nice candle and my thanks.

Rowan

Look what finally, finally came in the mail! It’s dried Scottish rowan berries preserved in resin. According to the description when I bought it, it took two years to dry and preserve the berries and then encase them like this. (And the card that came with it says it was made into jewelry two years ago, seven months before it was picked…I’m assuming that’s a typo, but also amused by the suggestion it was mystically turned into jewelry before it grew on the tree or else it was created by via time-traveling, hehe.)

Rowan is associated with revelry and festival and fun (maybe partially because they can be strung into garlands? IDK), fresh berries are foraged and can be used in tea or cooking going way back, and dried rowan berries are a very old and powerful protective charm because of a curious ability to make one immune to enchantment, ensorcellment, spells, spellbinding—even when those come from spirits, the Folk, etc.—and it needs no magick of your own, nor energy, nor intention, but just works in itself. Or so it’s said.

Earlier this year, working through stuff with my spirits, I asked for such a thing. I’m not easy to trick or magick and not for long, but sometimes a little for not very long is enough for damage to be done still. And it gets easier if Someone is willing to wait weeks or months for me to be tired and let my guard down just once or uses my trust against me. My spirits seemed taken aback that out of the hundreds (yeah, going to go with hundreds) of times last year I traveled or dreamwalked and got involved, I was worried about so few I could count them on one hand and have fingers left. But I was struggling to let it go, not so much because it happened but because those were personal and meant the most to me, and because in them I made trouble for Anubis or brought danger to the Free Court because I believed and vouched and then turned out to be wrong.

There was a cynical and frustrated part of me resisting. How could I embrace more fully the way they were encouraging if it didn’t matter how cautious or wary I was, how strong, what I knew, which skills I cultivated? All Somebody had to do was win a little kindness or goodwill, then run me down and wait for me to become vulnerable, to render it all useless or close enough.

I thought maybe there’d be training or ordeals, but instead they told me to wear rowan berries. I had to look it up and read about it to understand. And at a time when the spirits were pushing for me to “come back to them” and “re-center myself again as one of them” I worried: didn’t it make me weak or that less true—surely, they didn’t need such charms?

Not so fast. My spirits are Elves that trend benevolent or trickster-ish, but in the past, they’ve long had dealings and alliances with more capricious groups of Folk—and as often as they’ve been allied, they’ve made war between them as well, and even in the best of times often play games and generally don’t pretend each other are harmless.

So… many reasons they might have for taking precautions (in fact, they strongly suggested they learned rowan could counter enchantment first then shared it with humanity, not the other way around). Some was what I expected, young children or the vulnerable but they said also sometimes warriors, mages, etc. who were injured or burned out or something that affected them might be given such charms, though it often required special dispensation. In was done when it was desirous or necessary to keep them in play, sent abroad or brought to courts, even at less than their best, and worth giving the possible insult of such a sign and its implied lack of trust in others.

It took five weeks for this charm—which they picked for me out of the ones available—to get here in the mail and I’m still not sure what to do with that information. I never am when they share stories of the Otherworlds that by their nature I could never verify, except that they’ve never led me astray before. As with the ribbons and in so many things, the more I understand, the more they explain what it means to them, the more it means to me as well. And honestly, it often feels overwhelming, to be cared about so much.

Anyway, I’ve been wearing it a couple days now and from the first moment, it has power. Not quite magick, not exactly energy; I can’t really explain it but I feel it. And they’ve been clear: it doesn’t protect from everything. Certain magick and spells, etc., those I asked about, yes, but not all the things ever. Nothing can do that. It’s just one significant tool in a growing repertoire. But that’s enough and…I really love it. ❤