New Year 2024

Happy first day of the new year! After the last few years and how they’ve gone, it feels hard to get very excited about the beginning of a new year anymore. But I’m trying.

I started out this morning with some meditation and a little energy work, then made a couple of offerings. I went back and forth on whether I wanted to do a divination of some kind or if it was better to not ask, but decided to do a quick general reading.

Vibe or theme for the year: Strength. Especially inner strength. I’m feeling like this is referring to both a resilience to weather challenges that come and also to overcome things within myself maybe, where I’m getting in my own way. It seems like a calm, lasting sort of strength rather than a moment.

What I should keep in mind: King of Mirrors (Cups). Empathy, wisdom, but staying emotionally balanced at the same time. Navigating rocky terrain good-naturedly. I think this is about staying centered and not letting whatever chaotic and stressful energies might be flying around get to me and push me around this year.

Any advice for me: The Hermit. Contemplation, connection to the Otherworlds, meditation. I get a calm, comforted sort of feeling looking at this card. So, maybe some peaceful solitude to retreat to this year as a way to rest and recharge.

Anything else for me to know: Knight of Mirrors (Cups). Mystical experience, the Otherworlds, magick. Energy and hopefulness and believing in the impossible. I didn’t have a set question or intention for this card, just any other message that might be out there for me about this year. The last couple years have felt very focused on the mundane, or on the ordinary Out There…it would be nice if there was a little more mysticism. And I’m not sure if it’s relevant here, but this is also one of the cards I associate strongly with Anubis in this deck so maybe He’ll be hanging around more, too.

—-

Overall, I’m glad I did the divination. I think this is going to be tough year; there’s a lot going on in the world, plenty in the Otherworlds, and I’ve got a lot of projects and goals to work on this year personally, also. So, it seems like going to busy. I was prepared for all the scary cards, but this reading instead seems very useful and focused on actions I can take that will help me as I go into 2024.

So…cool. It’s a good way to start off the year. 🙂

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!
—-
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!

Mystic South 2023 Thoughts

Last weekend, I attended the Mystic South pagan conference in Atlanta and it was awesome. I had been feeling very stuck and disconnected and burned recently, so it was a great recharge and rekindling . Now, it feels like I’m moving forward again.

It seemed so much longer than only three days and I’m still thinking through a lot of things that came up while I was there. I learned new skills and areas of study I want to continue expanding from the workshops. And I didn’t buy any new books, when I cleared out my Mystic South bag to pack and take with me, there were a couple of books I had bought last time in 2019 that I’d completely forgotten, so I have new reading material anyway. Yay!

And after the last few years, it was nice to be reminded that there are all these other pagans still out there and doing things. Several friends were there and it was great to catch up—some I hadn’t seen since late 2019—and I met new folks, as well. It seems like it jumpstarted a little bit of reconnecting and maybe finding more people and group stuff to do around here again.

Spiritually, it was like waking up. My Gods and spirits reconfirmed in a very vivid way that They care and are supportive. They never have not been there, but I felt like I was the one far away and just disconnected. It also helped to confirm my path and what the next steps are, which is something I’d been asking for guidance about for a while now.

The beads in my braids that I switch out a lot and weave with whatever vibes I need suddenly broke while I was there and I had to tie them off the braids so they wouldn’t untwine entirely; sometimes that happens from wear but I’d just checked these and they were perfect. The other answer is the energy and magick I wove into them suddenly broke with enough force to break the physical object. That usually happens when something changes or finishes…a threshold is crossed somehow, and that seems to be what happened this time because They said I could remake them, but not exactly the same again. These were done.

I also, very unexpectedly, left with an agreement to do work with a new deity (but not exactly) until the end of next May. We’ve been dancing around each other in misunderstandings and missed connections for years, but this time it went differently and my regular and closest Gods and spirits vouched for Her and agreed to act as guardrails just in case. She’s offering me some explanations and answers and a plan to help me push free of some of this BS from the last few years, finally. Worth taking a little bit of a chance, I reckon.

I realized how much fears and doubts have been keeping me from saying all I wanted to say, doing all I wanted to do, and sharing all I hoped to share. Being all of myself I can be—again, finally. If I don’t start, I think it’s very likely now that I’ll get some compassionate divine foot in ass…and I’d maybe deserve it. Because the challenge is going to be not slipping back into the old rut now that I’m home from Mystic South. But I’m ready to make the changes, and maybe even do something worth writing about here again.

Bookends On May

It’s been a weird month. I’ve been working through some things and it’s somehow managed to be both too long and not nearly long enough for that.

I started the month off with my usual rituals and wrapping my magick ribbon I’d been working on since the Equinox. I think it turned out well after the six weeks of overlapping dyes to get it half orange and half blue-purple-black. It was nice, quiet, and there was still a strong feeling of gathering and raising energy more than most years. Like something ongoing.

Usually the ribbon is a wish or hope for the coming year, but this time it seemed more like an agreement or commitment, something just beginning that will continue for the year. I’ve spent the rest of May trying to understand how to move forward now. Guidance hasn’t been coming in words or cards, so it’s taken more time and listening. Usually, my People only talk so not-in-words to me if there aren’t any words for what They’re trying to explain.

Some of it is about magicks and, specifically some kinds I’ve been running away from for a long time that it’s well past time to stop. And some has been about mindset—no matter how much shadow crap I do, there’s always still more to be done yet.

It’s been kind of a different way than my Gods and spirits usually ask me into new things. Most of the time, They invite me to do things and dangle the learning itself as an incentive, and then I look up eventually and realize I’ve changed along the way. This time, though, it’s the endgame they’re holding up—or at least a possible one—and just asked if I wanted to be that person, but have mostly only been telling after I agreed what the steps are to get there. I think the last time it was done in that order was 2015.

I’m wondering, though, if this is the same journey I was invited to last year. It’s the same core magicks involved, similar ways of thinking, some of the same projects and practices I’d never finished. I had all the pieces before but wasn’t sure how put it all together. But my efforts led into the conversations that led into the images I’ve been shown and then the asking to commit now. It would make sense: I got lost last time I tried, so this time I’ve been given a landmark to aim toward as well.

I guess I’ll find out. Part of me is excited, but the other part is tired and has enjoyed sitting on the sidelines and doing minimums for a little while. I miss the days when I felt inspired and full of energy.

New Car Stickers

Just a little thing to share today, but I’m excited about it. I bought some new stickers for my car’s back window!

Years ago, I bought an aegishjálmr, a vegvísir, and the name of Anubis in hieroglyphs. The first two are still fine, but my Anubis one had sort of burned up. My car just gets so much sun in the afternoons on the back window the way it’s parked here. I was just painting it back silver with a metallic sharpie every few months, but then it got too crispy and started flaking off. So, time for a new one.

I  was able to buy one from the same shop again, but I did dark red to match my car instead of silver to match its trim this time because often metallic fades faster and even if the red fades, it’ll probably bleach out instead of browning out and so still show on my tinted glass. I’ve been surprised how closely it matches my paint (just a teensy bit less orangey)  and how vivid it looks in sunlight—it’s so lovely!

And Isis had made it known to me for a while now that when I replaced that sticker, she would like to be included the next time around and specifically wanted some version of this winged image—and the same shop had one of those, also, so I was able to get them matching. Which was perfect.

I don’t have a ton of placement choices on my window if I want to keep them off the defroster lines, and this is the only one that felt right. Even though it means giving up my rear wiper—but I rarely used it anyway since it was broken for a while and so now I always forget about it. But it does seem…interesting…to me that of the four, it’s the only one I can see while I’m driving. The others are up so high that the headliner is in the way.

I also got these wonderful coordinated free gifts from the shop: Anubis name hieroglyphs, Isis name hieroglyphs, and winged Isis. I’m not sure what I’m going to do with them yet, but they’re really cool. I’ll find something, I’m sure.

And so this whole things sort of feels Isis-blessed, maybe, and I’ve asked and She’s not saying no. I have my hopes and some theories about why, but…well, that’s thoughts for another day.

—-

*If you’re wondering, the shop is TheSamAntics on Etsy…looks like she’s moving to other non-Etsy shops, but all the links to those are over there in the shop description. (And I’m not being paid or anything, but if I’m going to have a whole post about cool things I bought from a small seller, then I reckon I should say who, is all.) 😉

Cocoon January

I didn’t really mean for it to be so long before posting again, but it just hasn’t felt these last few months like I did anything worth writing about. The end of 2022 was cold, gray, and rainy and I felt burned out and so kept to the basics of carrying on my practice and not much else.

Belated happy New Year, though! The last few years I haven’t done much to celebrate and I still didn’t feel like doing a big divination or anything this year. I wanted to do something, though—it’s seemed like the last three or so years have bled together and so I tried something different. Instead of looking ahead or else looking back, I tried to be very in the moment this year and did a small fire ritual around midnight to cut cords and let go and bring as little energy as possible with me into 2023. I don’t know if or how it’ll work out, but it’s not *not* working so far, which is a good start anyway.

After that, I decided to treat January differently this year, as well. I often feel tired in November and December and look forward to things being over and that span of time after Solstice, Yule, family Christmas, etc. before my White Spring celebration comes at the beginning of February and it’s time to start seeds and prepping my garden and weather starts to lighten up to begin on other projects. Yet, every year, I get caught up—or try to catch myself up in—the New Year vibe and then push through it with big plans instead. But given how early in the year I’ve started to feel worn down the last few, and how burned out I felt a lot of last year, I decided to take the time and make January a quiet and restful period instead. Like I was curled up in a little cocoon until it was time to come back out.

I saw something on New Year’s Eve about how 2023 ought to not be about hustling, but about embracing one’s hobbit potential. That sort of became a theme for my January…while resting, I started restocking my tea cupboard that was getting sadly empty, and beginning to cook things again, and play with my weird little musical instruments and all the other small, simple joys that were a big part of my life a few years ago, but had fallen to the wayside now.

It’s been good to rest and recharge a bit, remember those little things start weaving them back into my life. And in the peace and quiet, I’ve begun to feel more connected and excited to start doing things again. That’s a nice way to begin 2023.

Lunar Eclipse

What a lovely full eclipse it was last night! I didn’t think I was going to get to see it most of the day because it was so cloudy, but in the last hour or two beforehand the sky cleared after all.

There’s such an interesting energy to me around lunar eclipses. I’ve always thought they were incredible and fascinating, but I remember years ago, growing up, feeling for some reason quite unsettled by them as well. I didn’t have the language yet to articulate the energy/magick thing I was experiencing around them, but that’s what it was. Any attempts I made back then to search mythology and history for a reason why I felt such strange power from it led me only to dismal explanations. There’s actually very little positive lore about eclipses. Mostly it’s a bad omen, a triumph even temporarily of darkness or evil, the moon being attacked or devoured—by a wolf, by a dragon, by a jaguar, what have you—or else being covered veiled or deliberately hidden or covered in blood…and then only just escaping again afterward.

Earlier on in my spiritual journey (around late 2015-early 2017) when I was finding my way with spirits in the Free Court, learning my ritual roles there, and from the start it was so much moon symbolism that felt quite intimidating. I mean…it isn’t always there, isn’t always whole, is only visible in the dark, and periodically gets “devoured” as a terrible omen and barely makes it out. What kind of ritual roles and magick was I getting myself into here? Maybe it was a bad omen for me, also.

My spirits have quite a different take, though: consistently with them, rituals and signs and magicks and omens aren’t all good or all bad, but both entwined, and this is no different. A lunar eclipse is a sign of darkness and struggle but equally or more also an omen of hope and resilience. I have a shape and framework to put everything I feel—both lovely and unsettling—into now and I can’t pinpoint when it happened but their beliefs stopped being their beliefs and became our beliefs instead.

So it was a wonderful small ritual with them last night, sort of…peaceful and comforting even. It’s a relief now that the part of me that looks up and sees and feels only something beautiful and inspiring and the part that sees and feels darkness and danger and something strange in it are now both whole and one in the same. This is definitely not the first eclipse I’ve experienced in this way but with each one I feel more certain and this was the brightest, most total one yet.

Incense

A few weeks ago, I burned incense for the first time in maybe two or three years. It’s one of my favorite little everyday ritual things, but I didn’t have any. I ran out ages ago and the world was chaos and family working from home don’t like it, so…I had leftover candle samples from when I sold them in my shop and tried to switch to that instead.

I love my candles but it just hasn’t been the same. They feel like completely different energies and experiences to me. Recently, I pulled out blank sticks I bought hoping to add my own scent, and found if I put a few drops on and stuck the stick in front of a fan for a few minutes (until it doesn’t flambé up and become a fire risk), then burned it immediately, it worked great!

Around the same time, I was cleaning out my “studio” room, which had become storage for camper rebuild stuff, so I could tiptoe back to the desk and finally vacation my online shop and begin a much-needed revitalization. And the worst thing about the room has now become the best: it has no A/C or air exchange, just an open window on the hot side of the house and a desk fan…but because there’s no return vent, the incense smoke goes out the window and doesn’t bother anyone.

Now it’s something I’m doing regularly again while working. Sometimes I put intentions into it or dedicate it to Someone, but a lot of times I don’t and it’s just for me and grounding. It feels like I’ve lost so many of my little practices over the last few years as walls closed in and family who has only become less okay with my beliefs over time were around more, so it’s been good to “reclaim” one for a change and get a practice back. Especially something can do every day to keep a regular aspect of my practice that isn’t holidays or big signs. So that’s been really nice.

     

(I don’t usually burn more than one stick at a time, but this was the first burn and the room had been stagnant for quite a while, so really needed to get the air and energies flowing again. And this worked great.)

It’s such a little thing but it helps everything; no matter how dismal the day or the world seems, I’ve yet to have one that can’t be made at least a little bit better with some music and incense time.

Holiday Weekend, Part I: Seven Years Oathbound

Hope everyone had a lovely ritual holiday over the weekend if you celebrate!

I started off as usual, the last day of April because that night’s the anniversary of making my first oath to Anubis and receiving my first ritual collar from Him. This year felt a little special because that was in 2015 so it was seven years—which, for some reason, feels so much longer to me than six did. A “long time” now, somehow. And there was Dark Moon, which I dedicate to Anubis also; even if He and I don’t do rituals or anything, they stay set aside for Him.

It’s strange now, remembering back, how terrified I felt of that first step at the time. There was so much legalese in that first oath and I was trembling and could barely get words out during the ritual. I’d been pagan less than three months at the time and (as far as I knew, at the time) had known Him only about five weeks. And He had originally asked for the permanent version, already made clear His intentions to romance me, and said that he hoped if I felt the same and agreed one day that would lead to godspousery.

(My altar back then. This tiny version is the only one I could find now. ❤ )

To this day, I can’t really articulate why I agreed to it, except somewhere deep down I knew. Something in me must have remembered, because He felt like home and I loved Him already enough everything I’d ever called love in this life seemed like a shadow of it in comparison. It feels like probably the most important decision of my life—for itself, yes, but also as a threshold moment because nothing good since, everything else with Anubis, my spirit-Beloveds, my soul-family, my spirits in the Free Court, Isis, Vanaheim, all my spiritual Work…none of it could have happened quite the same without that oath. And that why, at the time, He said He was asking it: for trust and to protect me (especially until I knew enough to better protect myself) because it’d be a long, weird, twisty, dangerous path ahead. And I don’t think even He knew it all.

I wanted to do lots of things on Saturday, particularly finish this necklace that was the first one I ever made for Anubis but then realized I didn’t have the tools or skill to finish the pendant and now do, but instead He asked me to let go of the projects and making and doing things and try more to relax and open up emotionally and energetically and just be.

So I ended up just polishing and one minor fix on something that had become loose in the last couple days on my collar since polishing and repairs are often times of putting more energy into it together and what a great time for it, I cooked some Egyptian-inspired food for the first time, and I re-watched The Mummy (1999).

I guess I still did things, but it all felt like non-stressful things together, rather than something I was doing for Him or rituals and needed to worry or feel worry about. And a couple good luck things happened—probably *the* thing I was stressing most over about in mundane aspects of my future and realizing there’s a light and it’s going to be okay was like the weight of the world lifted off my shoulders a bit—so it felt like Anubis was trying to make sure I had a happy day at least as much as I was trying to do the same. Aw, yay. ❤

There was still a vaguely ritual bit. I lit up a homemade Dark Moon candle and once the wax was melty, I added a few drops of other oils I associate with Anubis and the relationship—not just any Dark Moon, but o/Our Dark Moon. And then time together, and there was magick and energy work/exchange also, and just…connection in a way that English has no word for, and it was good and meant a lot because it’s not easy to let my guard far enough for such things.

It was good and that was just the first half of the holiday weekend, but this is getting long so my Beltane/May Day/etc. will have to be tomorrow’s post.

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.