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.

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.

Into October

Well, it’s been quite a while again. I feel like I’ve been really busy, but also at the same time just carrying on like always. I’ve reached a point where there’s *so* much weird in my life, but it’s happening so consistently that it doesn’t stand out the same way anymore. And at this point, any sense of time I had left after last year besides a vague awareness of changing seasons and moon phases is entirely gone now.
I had to look back at the last time I posted…since then I celebrated a quiet Wep Ronpet wayyy back in August and had a relative peaceful Autumn Equinox. Full Moons, etc. have continued on more or less as usual, though the energies and magicks this year still feel off and a little weird somehow—or at least, different from previous years and what I had come to expect before.

I’ve been continuing to work my way through a lot of things. I feel certain I would have done so anyway—eventually, at least—but these last couple years now I’ve had a *lot* of uninterrupted time alone with just myself and the Otherworlds. It’s often felt like interactions and timeframes with other people were the brakes on personal growth and shadow work and spiritual lessons, and since I last saw friends in person in January 2020 and went to my last event/group ritual for Yule 2019, it’s felt like a bit of a runaway ride.

At the same time, unrelatedly, in January of 2020, I agreed to a whole new level of Work in the Otherworlds. Liminal stuff out in the Between (originally under auspices of Anubis that He first gave me in spring 2017, but now in my own right as well) that manifested into a wildly active dreamwalking practice. I’ve mentioned it before, but it’s been so much more intense and more *regular* than I expected or expected it to stay. Nearing the two-year mark, I’ve seen so much and met so many Beings and been so many strange places and it’s still consistently almost every night and often two or three journeys each.

It’s the first time since I was little and not really allowed out into the outside world I’ve spent more time with Beings in and from the Otherworlds than humans. That’s…changing me. And I don’t think it’s a bad thing—in any case, long overdue—even if I’m getting tired and burned out of the growing and growing up and growing into at this point. Forsan et haec olim meminisse iuvabit…but I doubt it, lol.

Anyway, I’m still around and I do want to get back into the habit of writing here regularly again. I’ve just spent the last three days doing software updates so at least my computer can load this site again now, which is a step in the right direction. Lately people have just felt so far away; or maybe I was the one too far off. Either way, the last couple of weeks my Gods and spirits have been urging me that it’s time to find a way across that distance.

Today’s Thoughts

Tomorrow, I’m looking at starting a series of more serious posts sharing my old experiences…I made a deal some years ago, after all. Planning it has meant a crap week and a crappier day. I don’t want to go back and tell old tales, but I promised and I really don’t think I can adequately always share now without a bit of backstory sometimes.

I’ve been tired and sad and triggered and pissed off at everything, all day. And I’m trying very hard to not get lost in that or let it scare me off from doing the thing tomorrow. Even if maybe a part of me wishes for that.

It’s worth it to do, though; I believe that. And if it’s now, this month and this year, maybe I’ll never have to go back in time quite the same way ever again. It won’t be promises hanging over me anymore.

But in any case, I had to go back to my old blogs media folder for this photo and haven’t done that I don’t think since I shut it down and…is it possible that I was ever so funny and sarcastic back then for real, or that my spiritual life even sort of looked like this? Must have, because I still remember why each one was relevant. I think I might have lost my touch, lol, and let myself to get too serious over the years:

It’s hard to believe it was ever that way, but I remember trying so hard for when I began writing here to dig up some respectability from somewhere and do my Gods and spirits justice, even though They never asked or demanded it of me. I do miss those old days and ways now, how I didn’t have to translate or make reasonable sense of it all the way I feel I have to now.

Maybe it was a gift tonight…so much laughter, for so long, all the remembering why it’s worth it and why I love this path after all. Maybe it was a reminder given to me that the big and serious things aren’t actually the whole sum of it, even if I feel some pressure toward those elements of it these days.

Or maybe it’s a sign I’ve gotten too serious or respectable and need to remember everything else. Might have to do a reading about it soon. Because those are the days that led and made me, even if they were more than a bit weird after all.

Star Ruby And Antlers

I mentioned back in this post about all the lessons I’d been learning lately and in particular, how guidance from spirits in the Free Court, the magick they showed me, the stories they told, really felt like a revelatory moment where the whole world—or maybe just me—shifted a little into a new perspective.

Clarity replaced anxiety. A strange surety replaced so much shame and self-doubt. By letting go of what I thought should be or where I ought to fit and instead embracing what *is* and where I *actually* belong meant I have a framework to let go of old pain and anger, where the world had seemed so lonely and full of crushing expectations it doesn’t now, and where some truths had felt cruel they no longer do anymore.

It’s been a month now since, this weekend exactly, since the crescendo of all that. And there’s always that time after what appears to be big growth or new understanding or a life-changing moment, of waiting to see if it’s as significant as all that or just important and you were caught up in it at the time. Some of the previous bits and pieces and lessons this tied together turned out like that—yay, but afterward I didn’t know what to do with it so…aw, now what?

This one, though? Not at all.

Which comes to the point: I said at the end of that post I’d bought a ring with a star ruby and antlers because those were symbols in the stories and I planned to empower it as a talisman to remind myself and keep the energy and lessons close and not let them slip away—and it arrived from the other side of the world today! (Also, Someone might have nudged it because it’s two weeks ahead of its estimate, only arrived at the regional mail distribution center last night, and says via tracking it’s still on its way to my town; maybe I was just supposed to get it on the one-month mark?)

It’s lovely! And to be so small and not a super high-grade star ruby, I’m really impressed by how visible the asterism is inside—and the longer I’m wearing it today, the brighter it seems, which makes me wonder if it’s going to be one of those weird gemstones for me. It’s definitely a lot more than is showing up in my pictures.

I did a tiny ritual to clear it and dedicate it with one of the candles I’ve made for the Court, then sat a bit and tried to really bring to the fore the feelings and energy of the magick and stories that were shared with me and the parts with the relevant signs in particular to put those vibes into it. And I did a little working and asked for assistance from associated Beings to protect it; I’ve had to do the same with my wedding ring from Anubis and my ring for Vanaheim that also have weird shapes that can get caught on something…they bent before but after, never again no matter what they caught on, so this time I’m getting ahead of it for the sake of those little antlers. Magick is cool.

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.

—-

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!

—-

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.

—-

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.

—-

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.)

Darkest Night And Everything After

Hope everyone’s had a lovely Solstice, Christmas, Yule, etc. (Although, I usually keep celebrating Yule until New Year’s so it’s not over yet.) Mine’s been a bit of a mixed bag.

(This post got long, so I’m putting it under a cut. And it gets weird…*this is not the fluffy holiday post you’re looking for* lol.)

End Of The Darkening

Hey…I’m still around! It’s been a long couple of months, but with the Solstice and the end of the year arriving and the promise of light returning, it finally feels like maybe things are looking up. I called it, that the collision of the season of shenanigans the darkening days always brings me and the general shitstorm that’s been 2020 would be tough, but—even more than I expected.

It’s felt like one thing after another after another. Both in my path and Work in the Otherworlds, not all Beings are honest or easy or uncomplicated even when we’re on the same side and working for the same things. The young spirits I wrote about earlier this year…well, they’re adults now with their own plots and plans that more than once, they’ve tried to manipulate and magick me into joining; I’m not okay with that and they weren’t okay with me not being okay with it, and so now I don’t know if I’ll see them again. Several Gods—not ones I’m very close to, but once I was and thought there was still trust between us—I’m now not so sure. And I had a final falling out with an old (corporeal) friend and even when it’s justified or even necessary, that’s always still a sad thing. One after another.

But just over this weekend it’s felt like I’ve finally broken out the other side, can breathe again, see color and light in the world again. I spent so much of this year feeling I was going it alone (though, looking back, maybe the times my People were busy or far away only *felt* that long). I wanted to challenge myself and prove, even if I was the only one who needed convincing, that my magick and skills were enough to walk the next chapters of my path and do astral/spiritual Work in my own right Out There and hold my own enough to be worthy of it. I wanted to stand up myself and see if I really was the person that the Otherworlds swear up and down I am.

It’s hard to say if it was all just part of the journey and lessons learned (because the whole year had that frantic crash-course feeling of being qualified enough but only just) or if it was real. Did I push this far and They allowed me into danger because I was so resolved? Or was this year as chaotic and off the rails as it felt and the stakes—and Their trust I’d succeed—really as high as it seemed when I stood alone and if I had called the cavalry, maybe They’d have been too far and otherwise engaged to answer? Maybe both: They knew it would go off the rails but didn’t share my doubts whether I had what it took, so They let me train under live-fire all year that was all as real as it looked and could have hurt me but They didn’t believe it would.

Whatever the case, I made it! I’m not sure if I was ready in January, but I became it every step of the way so I must have been near enough, anyway. I don’t know if I had the skills, but I have so many new ones now I learned since then and can hardly remember what I did before them. I don’t know if I have the magick or the power Anyone said, but it shocked me and while I wasn’t close to victorious in every working I made, I never lost badly enough to get in real trouble (and as a relatively small fish in the big damn ocean of the Otherworlds, that still feels like a victory). And I don’t know if I managed the resolutions I  made rather cynically at the beginning of the year to “stop wanting what I couldn’t have” (turns out just deciding not to want something is really hard), but I’ve accepted those hard truths and made more peace with it than I thought I could.

In short—and I know I’ve said it before, because it was clear even in real-time—2020 has been exactly what I was promised it would be: one of those very intense years you never want to live again, but changed your life and afterward you feel grateful for and would never choose to give up, either.

And now? I sense my People more clearly now than in at least a couple of years. As the last of things were coming to crescendo last week and I was too tired, finally, to have anything left to fight with and my Beloveds and Court closed ranks around me so I wouldn’t have to…it felt like home the way They said it would, and for maybe the first time I felt I could be deserving of that and not (unfairly, perhaps) like it was being given to me on credit for who I might be someday, instead of who I am now.

I find myself abnormally thankful for my Beloveds and my Family and my Court and Everyone, for the belonging and the way They treat me after a year of Others, for all our strange holidays and rituals that feel like coming home. Bring on the Solstice, and Yule, and the New Year…and I’m actually excited also about this cool celestial convergence and hope it brings good energy to dedicate a few new tools and things.

—

PS – Only rarely do I end up writing just ahead of a holiday instead of only after, and so Happy Solstice and Blessed Yule, everyone!

October Ruminations

Well, it’s been a while here. Again. I have all these things I want to share, weird things and fun creative stuff, but I just haven’t been able to find focus recently. Honestly, I’ve just been trying to write this post on working through stuff and how it’s been hard to write lately for over two weeks now…but I wanted to do it before Samhain, etc. and my ritual fires tomorrow.

(I’m already preparing: purifying and re-seasoning one of my two ritual cauldrons—because I don’t have a fire pit—after a previous magick working I definitely want to reawaken no energy from. I don’t usually use both for my Burning Night rituals, but was advised I might this year.)

It’s felt like everything was waiting. The pandemic is spiking again, we have a significant election in only days, and another hurricane just hit my region and while the worst missed my area a lot of friends and other folks are now also waiting to know damage or get power back. After a year of one thing after another, the ambient energy of uncertainty, stress, “what’s next now?” is strong and it’s hard to plan or start something new or even just contextualize and understand how to think about everything when everything feels up in the air.

It took me a while to realize that was part of it for me: what right now, this whole year, means is dependent on what happens next and since I don’t know what happens next, I can’t be sure. My Gods and spirits have since early 2017 have been consistently urging that hard times were coming and I only had until 2020 to learn and prepare and grow stronger. They gave this year explicitly. Those messages have only continued, but with an addendum that it was the eleventh hour so push harder and do more and go further this year until about six weeks ago. And then They told me to finalize and brace.

There’s been two people I mentioned those warning to even in part all this time. I wasn’t sure if they were about the Otherworlds or this one, just for me or broader, and I honestly still don’t and can only guess. I don’t like guessing: if nothing happens and everything gets better and the personal growth of this year is all of it, I may well feel angry and used and manipulated to worry and offer more than made sense and I’ll feel like a dumbass; but if shit goes down like my Gods, my spirits, my own foresight, and a significant number of people in this country think it might, I may be very fortunate to have gotten head-up enough to mentally prepare myself. Or maybe it turns out to be something that might have been but was thwarted or something else I can’t see yet.

This is exactly why I think it’s both potentially useful and yet also dangerous sans a community dedication to spiritual discernment and the ways that takes shape to share too much personal experience or divination. Everything I know comes through certain channels and filters and so does everyone else’s: sometimes we’ll agree, sometimes we won’t, and sometimes sorta in an Obi-Wan-esque certain point of view way…and seems to me much of paganism/polytheism is still learning the personal confidence and communal mercy necessary for that (me included). Plus, I’ve no interest in playing street corner doomsday preacher.

So…why am I saying it now? Because increasingly, I’m conquering my own fears? Plus, I think the first step is admitting we have experiences and divinations and advice from Beings that leave us asking these questions. Further, folks I’ve had “real talk” with before have asked me, new folks have found me online and asked private questions, and some little things I shared had people agreeing *yes, just like that, wow, I thought I was the only one* or when others beat me to it and I agreed, they otherwise thought they were alone also.

It’s not the only thing I’ve been working through. As I predicted, it’s been a hell of shenanigans year. Since last I wrote, I’ve been party to powerful magick I didn’t want but accidently gave the impression I did (I didn’t agree with the technique, but did with the purpose and wasn’t keen to it quick enough to close that loophole), I’ve been tricked into a blood sacrifice by Someone that I trusted but kind of don’t anymore, I’ve negotiated successfully in my own right with spirits I’m truced with who are keeping their part to see me an a free soul after all, and I’m being harassed by a soul I used to know who apparently has powerful Allies.

On top of all that, powerful Beings with powerful energies and worldviews are now back in the world more actively. I met Them growing up, raised in certain circles (not the spirits I’ve written about attacking me before), and wanted to escape. I have tried not to think badly because not all of Them are bad and They’re not always bad…but the more powerful They are, the more dangerous They become—and They scared me then and have power now They only fantasized about back that far.

I thought it was just me until Anubis gave a metaphorical smack upside the head that I wasn’t weak or not healed; They *were* back and I was realizing and relating for real but never forget I saw and knew Them before and so now was different. As much as I might feel again like the kid I was or hurled back to that time, it’s not true…I know Their ways, I’m defended, I’ve changed. It isn’t like before.

Well, I tried. I’m not sure I brought this into a cohesive post, but neither was my month. All I know is the more involved with Gods and spirits you get, the more interesting a lot of things maybe become. And the journey isn’t usually easy or a straight line, but I’m still convinced it’s worth it. That’s all I’ve got this October.

Blessed Samhain, and see y’all on the flip side!