There you
are! Goodness gracious what a difference
a month makes! Come inside and get
cooled off – I have icewater, berries, melon…
Yes, I think I’ve
got some kind of cooling tree-magic on this place as well, nice and cool in
here, no need for fans or air conditioning in this cottage! Have a seat, give your head a rest from the
sun!
Just a month ago
we were still talking about bitter winds, and then it was as though the Spring,
frustrated with not being able to get Winter to leave, called on Summer, and
Summer came and sat on Winter until
Winter squirmed out and left, and now we’ve got Summer. Oh we’ve had a few lovely Spring days at
least in between, but these past few days have been proper July. In May.
Meanwhile, out
East, they’ve just had snow. In May.
Well, it’s just
like what Elen showed me – it’s a deeper weave now. We may well see cameos of all the seasons, in
each season. Just part of that new dance
Ratatosk said we might want to watch and try to learn.
Yes! You’ve noticed the dark blue quilted jacket
then, over my pale purple robes? A nice
touch I think – and just as well it’s cooler in here than it is in the
walking-around world, because this would be altogether too many layers for
there.
And that striking
young man in the next room, with the loose black hair – that’s Clover! He must have found a way on his own to take
human form – I certainly didn’t teach him that.
I get the sense that it’s not terribly comfortable for him, but he seems
to want to stick with it. He seems to
like having fingers, for one thing, and I guess his human eyes are more suited
to book-reading than his big luminous ones.
I notice he’s kept his long shaggy tail though, and from time to time I
catch him with long pointed shaggy black ears on as well. I think he can turn himself back if he wants to. Obviously I worry about his comfort, but he
seems to be doing what he wants to.
This brings me
back to thinking about ‘witch-form’, and the fact that this is the first time
in my life I’ve felt comfortable in my human shape. This goes way back too, to when I was in
daycare centre if I remember correctly – the first regular game I had with
other children. There were two other
little girls my age, and we played witches, only they were the witches – I was
the black cat. Even then, I was choosing
the animal persona over the human one – this feeling of ‘other’, among the
other humans, even then.
And really, this
goes even further back than that – you know how historically the great psychics
and mystics are said to be born with a caul?
I never had that, but my lateness (and terrible sense of direction even
then) caused me to be born with long black hairs all over, and full-black eyes
(the irises would later lighten to the dark brown they are now). So, born with a pelt rather than a caul,
whatever that might mean mythically.
Even in my
personal dream mythology, my dreams of being in wolf form, or of running on all
fours, symbolize ‘being myself’.
Yes – though it
was the foxes who meant ‘pay attention’ in my dreams, and Fox who is the
chiefest of my mystic animal guides, and though I have recently finally
embraced my deer aspects, and though I certainly share more personality traits
with those, it is wolf that is the non-human shape I have held most in dreams.
Even any kind of ‘inner
child’ work is affected by this – I used to say, I don’t have an ‘inner child’;
I have an ‘inner cub’!
But now that I
have allowed myself to think of myself as a witch, that has changed. Not that it’s gone, by any stretch – I can always
access it – but there is less of a layer of urgently needing to now. So it’s interesting. I am watching it, seeing where it goes.
In other news, it
is Spring, always a wild season for transitions. Starting way back in High School, I started
calling it ‘The Death Season’, because it seems as though a lot of people make
their departures during this time.
Recently, in the walking-around world, I have been attending and joining
in monthly sessions with people who use sound for healing and connecting with spirit
and all that good stuff – I’m so happy to have the chance to do this, and it
feels like an extension of the sung-magic work I do as a vitki, working with
the runes – and in two of the sessions I was shown visions about exactly that aspect
of Spring.
The first one, I
stood in reindeer form with Elen, and she showed me how the dying things, the
dropped things at this time, all fed the Spring, all gave it nourishment to
help it happen – and for me, that gave a deeper meaning to why the female
reindeer drops its antlers in the Spring.
The second one,
during a sounding for Persephone, I was shown this:
Hades awakens, feels beside him in his
bed, the warmth where Persephone had been a moment before, and knows she has
gone up, to bring the Spring to the living world. He rises then and sings to her, he sings out
his love for her, deep and booming and joyous, sings it so it rises up and
feeds the living Earth above, sings it so she feels it. And all the dead, they love her too, and they
sing the love song as well, and all those love songs rise up and nourish the
Earth, helping Spring happen. And
everything that dies at this time helps to feed the Spring, helps the Spring to
happen. And it is a way for the dead to
ride up in their songs, to become a part of the new grass, the flowers, to see
the Sun again. And Persephone, walking
in the living world, she feels the love, and all the living world is dear to
her, even the noise and construction and fuss, and she walks amidst it all,
feeling the love song rising up through the Earth, rising through the soles of
her dancing feet, and she sings it too, and helps the Spring happen.
After that, we
were asked to sketch or draw or write what we had experienced during the
sounding, and I drew a horrible picture of what I’d seen – well, I was pressed
for time – I would really rather make a poem of it, and so maybe I will. I’ll incubate on it!
Ah yes, the
poetry. Well I was going to turn my mind
back to focusing on poetry anyway. It
was funny – I was getting very frustrated, because I kept seeing these dangers in
the walking-around world so clearly, and nobody else around me seemed to be
listening to me, or seemed to see what I was seeing, or seemed to care. It was like those terrible dreams where you
see something dangerous coming, but nobody will listen. And I thought, I feel like Cassandra! And then
I thought: well now, if I am Cassandra, then what must I do to regain the
favour of Apollo?
And then I
thought, aha – I have been neglecting my poetry!
(Apollo was quick
at this point to reassure me that he wasn’t even a bit mad at me, but also that
I would certainly improve my life if I returned my focus to poetry and the
other Apollo-esque arts, so it’s definitely something I am thinking about.)
(Though, maybe
not archery. I think I’ll leave archery
out.)
Speaking of
returning to creating, and of those
sound-sessions: in the most recent one, we connected to the Mayan goddess
Ixchel, in the spirit of Beltane, and my goodness what a potent goddess she is
to know! She has a serpent on her head
(not only for the wisdom that represents but also for the male-aspect inclusion
element), and is a fertility and creativity goddess – among other things – and what
she showed me was intensely intoxicating, in the best possible way. See, it’s what creation is – the mind-snake
starts to pursue a creative path, sensitive, knowing, and feeling its way, and
chasing down where it feels good. We
follow the snake then, lose ourselves to that pursuit, it becomes a lovemaking,
the more we chase it, the better it feels, and it’s gloriously messy, big
watercolour spillovers of rainbow and stars, and we pant and sweat, and trust
the snake – the creative drive – we know that the Drive is wise, so we can let
it lead. That’s what I was forgetting –
how natural an act creating is – whatever kind of creating it is, whether
bringing through a book or a painting or a child – something I can definitely
use when I take up my pen again to return my focus to writing and poetry,
things I have allowed to lie fallow for far too many years now.
After the
sounding, we were asked to take a phrase to encapsulate our experience, and I
went with, “Creation is a lovemaking, and the Drive is wise!”, which I then went
on to belt out as a sexy song while I walked the snake-shaped path we had constructed
before, lined with crystals and river-rocks, and the other people at the event
singing along in wild chorus.
Yeah, it’s good
stuff.
Well, so wonderful
to see you again, what a journey we went in our conversation today! I see Clover there in the doorway so I think
this is his polite way of saying he needs me – or perhaps his polite way of
saying he needs me to be quiet! Ah yes,
shaking his head, no, he just has a question.
Be right with you then!
As for you,
please take a basket of berries with you, as you can see we have more than
enough, and I wouldn’t want them to go to waste! Stay cool out there! Take care!
See you again soon!
