Oh hurry in,
hurry in! It looks pleasant enough out,
sunshine and whatnot, but that wind has a nip to it, dragging those last
threads of Winter through, and there’s a storm of another kind crackling
through the air that I’d rather we both were out of.
Whew, there we
are. Have a seat, have some cookies and
cocoa, or tea if you like.
Yes, that’s
Clover in the other room – the Narrow I healed – he’s enlisted himself as my
apprentice now, and I’m glad of him. I
suspect Liam had something to do with it, but I’m not complaining.
There are rabbits
in the front garden now too – all hiding from the wind at the moment I
suspect. Well, I say rabbits, but I
think it’s probably more like one Rabbit.
I first saw her about a week ago, wild and brown, with standing up ears
and a wide wise eye. Violets – the little
cat – crouched in the hedge and growled her little growl, but didn’t dare
attack, which is good. I think the
Rabbit may be my own Rabbit returning – when I first started journey-work, I
used to journey with a Rabbit-guide often, and she tended to have a lot to do
with getting on with creating, when there was creating to do, so I’m glad to
see her again – I’ve lain fallow for too long.
But sometimes she does seem like many rabbits, when I peer out into the
lawn!
Still, I’d like
to see if she wants to do journeys with me again, and see where that leads.
What a week! This is what I meant by the ‘storm of another
kind’, when you first came in. I’ve had
such a hard time focusing, with all the ramped-up anxiety going on right now
out in the walking-around world. Crazy,
awful things happening, and scarcely a chance to breathe between them. It’s so important to find one’s places of
solace, even if they are only in the NOR.
Places that when you feel lost you can put yourself into the space of,
and suddenly you find you do know what to do.
On Monday, for example, after a particularly horrible thing happened
right in my city, and I was dizzy about it, and wondering what I could even do,
only one moment in the cottage, looking at Clover, and suddenly I found I DID
know what to do – a gentle, quiet casting to send peace and comfort to the
living victims and their families.
(Anubis assured
me that they all got over okay, the ones who were killed, so there’s that – but
what a horrible thing to have happened, I’m still shaking about it.)
And then later
again, wondering how to go about this casting, I simply checked in with my
cottage-self, pale purple robes and all, and there I was in the circle, an
amethyst point for each direction, points facing out, and in the between spots,
rose quartz, with little clear quartz points pointing out from them, and my
purple-robed self in the middle, radiating radiance and love, comfort and
peace.
We really do
know, it’s wondrous to realize, what the best thing is for us to do. And I found myself taking another step deeper
into it later on in the week when, stressed out from dealing with work and my
continued dealings with a difficult person at my walking-around world job, I
suddenly found myself thinking, “What does the witch see?”
How everything
changed around me, with that one simple question!
I mean, it had
been a huge enough epiphany for me earlier in the year when I finally allowed
myself to think of myself as a witch.
For years I’d always said, “Oh, I wouldn’t presume to call myself a
witch…”, as I did my mystic work, my shamanic work, my psychopomp work, my
vitki work. But then suddenly I realized
it wasn’t a matter of deciding to become a witch – with all I was doing, and
had been doing for years, I already was one!
And at that point – that simple allowing of the thought, “I am a witch.”
at last, everything opened up for me, I felt this deep calm and
confidence. I felt comfortable in my
human shape for the first time in my life – though I do tend to think of it as ‘witch-form’.
Such a simple
thing, and everything changed for the better – and so it was with that next
step, asking myself, in the middle of a moment of stress, “What does the witch
see?” And suddenly, I felt myself sink
into a more heart-centered mindset. I
could see the people around me more clearly, and more kindly, and more
compassionately. People’s jarring behaviours,
that had been bothering me a moment before, simply ceased to bother me, because
I could feel something of why they were doing them (even if it was only, “This
person feels they need to do this, to be more comfortable.”), and of course –
of course – they had nothing to do
with me.
I don’t know what
you have, I don’t know if you have a witch aspect-of-self, or a wise-person
aspect of self, but I do recommend that question if you find yourself in a
stressful situation – just ask yourself what that wise, mythic aspect of yourself
sees.
I think you are in for a very pleasant – and calming – surprise.
Of course, it
doesn’t always add up to calm – there is this man and his three small children
who sometimes get on the bus I’m on, for two stops on my way to work in the mornings,
and they always fill me with an excruciating sense of near-panic stress. So eagerly, armed with my world-changing
question, when they got on the bus the following morning, I asked myself, “What
does the witch see?” And the witch hissed! So sometimes we feel
these things we feel as valid warnings!
I still don’t know why or what it is about that little family group, but
I don’t think I even want to know.
Wild world.
But in general,
it’s helped me a lot, especially with the week it’s been. It’s like the reindeer thing – I took the
magick name Reindeer for many reasons – to recognize my connection to Elen of
the Ways for one thing, and to recognize my embracing of my cervid aspects,
better late than never and so on.
Reindeer even matches my Destiny number in numerology, so there’s that
potency as well.
And yes – it’s “Rainy”
for short (which short-form incidentally matches my Life Path number in the
numerology, so it’s nifty that way too).
But Reindeer is
rich with depths to plomb – for one thing, reindeer reminds me that I am one of
many, that we are all equal emanations of the radiance, but our task is to each
shine our own unique light, from where we are, in the midst of the many. Our own magick, bringing it through, to
enrich the whole.
And we all
belong. So it’s best to meet people eye
to eye, rather than shyly skulking through, sorry for existing, or looking down
from above, afraid to immerse, afraid to share vulnerabilities. We feel each other’s heartbeats. We breathe each other’s breaths. We need the magick of all of us
together. We need the whole song.
Well, I could go
on about reindeer!
So yes, hoping
this week is better, from a headspace standpoint at any rate. I have mentioned before that I have done work
with Loki about learning to dance with the chaos, about remembering that we are
still who we are, even when the chaos is happening around us – we have all the inner
resources we need to be the best we can be – and I recommend anyone who wishes
help with that to connect with him – from that aspect, he is amiable and not at
all frightening – very compassionate, as the god of chaos – the beauty of natural
chaos, as a force we can observe, and respectfully learn to dance with.
But Loki is more
to me than that – in the past year I realized he also very neatly represents a
big part of my Shadow for Shadow work.
And not the least of that is my tendency to – against my better
judgement – eat perhaps rather more chocolate than I have any sensible reason
to eat – and then become loquacious in a way that I later regret. And I thought about the old stories, where
Loki has perhaps rather more drink than he has any sensible reason to drink,
and then becomes loquacious in a way that he later regrets as well (granted,
sometimes with added murders involved, but thankfully that is not a problem I
share). So this week when I found myself
in a bad mental state, and realized I could definitely have been feeling better
had I been a little more careful with my intake, I sat down with him – my Shadow-Loki
aspect – and said Loki darling, we really have to be careful with this.
I did have a
funny moment with Cerridwen, actually, not long after I first allowed myself
the thought, “I am a witch.” A few days
after that day, I had absently eaten too many cookies, and I was hard on myself
for it, I said, “How can I be a witch if I eat too many cookies?”. Cerridwen laughed, and I realized how silly a
thing that was to say and laughed too.
And she said, “You’re just a witch who sometimes eats too many cookies.” And sometimes, that’s how it is. But I am working on doing better, so I
suppose recognizing when I am doing something I would rather not be doing is a
good start. It’s a mindfulness thing,
and all that.
And at least I
made Cerridwen laugh.
Oh yes, of course
– I’m so happy you could visit, what with all that crazy stuff going on out
there! And certainly, take some cookies
for your trip home, Clover certainly isn’t going to eat them!
Oh, there is one
more thing before you go – this came for you.
This little box. I don’t know who
it’s from, but they must have known you would come to visit – look it’s your
name right on it! Such a lovely little
box. It must be from someone who loves
you very much! Please take it with you,
open it at home when you have a quiet moment to really take in the beauty of
the box, and everything there is about the gift for you that’s inside. I’m excited for you! I wonder what it is!
Do you have
everything you came with? Good good,
wouldn’t want you forgetting anything, what with the cookies and the box and
all!
Oh and Full Moon
tomorrow! Don’t forget that either! Always good to keep in mind, what the Moon is
doing!
Well, take
care! Pleasant trip home! Goodnight goodnight!
