One Wedding and No Funeral
This morning, the blue fir tree to the north is absolutely bedecked in spiderwebs. I can only see them at this hour, when the early sun slants on the silver strands that run from limb tip to limb tip, the original tinsel. Gnats dance In the slant of light next to the cedar and there is a racket of bird song all around me even though I am half a block from the busiest street in West Seattle.
Some days I am able to see the miracles all around me more than others.
Today is one of those days, thanks to my friend horizon. Yesterday she helped me make part of my pledge of Bridgid come true or at least begin to…The pledge that I made on the final night of California Witch Camp, after a week of doing deep, personal and collective magic for right relationship with the land and right relationship, when 120 witches walked widdershins around the fire until they knew what their vow to Bridgid would be. Then, one by one, we began to turn and walk Sunwise, or clockwise, the direction of a spell of invoking. That night, I got to be one of the witches in the spell rather than priestessing at the center. As I walked, I heard Brigid saying to me something about doing my work every day… That’s what She wanted the last time I worked with Her. But I am an experienced enough witch now to know that we can listen to the gods and choose. And I couldn’t find the words to say yes to whatever daily thing She was asking me for. (Turned out to be daily Facebook lives didn’t it?)
So, I kept walking. Thinking about the magic of the week – the way we looked at the problems of the world and the healing that we needed. The way we asked for Her hand to temper us and to forge into sacred shapes of her making. (I am working so hard not to say “tools,” even though we were speaking of her tools of legend – the sword of light, the spear of victory, the cauldron of plenty, the stone of destiny. But still, my inner 12-year-old giggles every time we called ourselves “tools.”)
I thought about the mid-week tarot reading that broke my heart, telling me with the 9 of swords that I had to start doing my work and showing my tears out in the open. I thought about the spell of belonging that I had been casting all week with my beloved co-teacher, Abel and our path Elements of Magic. To stop working alone. To belong with a Will of Witches. And then, there among the witches, with 120 beautiful faces lit and licked by the fire, Bridgid stopped me and said “You have a dream of beauty for the earth, like I do. Carry that dream upon your brow and in your throat. “ And then she drifted away. And my pledge began to form in me, first, as a feeling, and then in words. I turned clockwise . I joined one of the lines of witches standing in the cardinal directions. I approached the fire, hearing the witches before me speak their pledges, loud and clear, each one punctuated by the strike of the hammer on Brigid’s iron anvil.
The hammer like a bell ringing into the earth.
The hammer like her hand, shaping steel, shaping us.
The hammer like a spell between the worlds, changing all the worlds.
When it was my turn, I stepped up to the fire I reached into the flames and poured them over me, cleansing my spirit, preparing me to say the sacred words. (A vow made in this way, within sacred space, before community, and before the goddess, must not be taken lightly.)
I bathed myself in the flames, and then I said “I will carry this dream of beauty upon my brow, I will share the tears of my heart. And I will do my work with a will of witches.
The words came not just from my throat but from the cauldron of my rib cage, the bell of my body. The hammer struck the anvil. And I turned and walked away from the fire to the place where Suzanne was waiting to tell me that the fire priestesses said that we needed us to take apart the Brigid dolly because it was too big to cast whole into the flames. And that’s when we started to dismember the goddess in the middle of the pledge taking.
But that’s another story.
I came home to one of the hardest post-camp re-entry’s I’ve had in two decades, the magic stirring so deeply in me that it was difficult to do my daily tasks. Until I started keeping my word. On the morning of the anniversary of my Reclaiming initiation, I did my first Facebook live. I meant to finish my coffee and go into the house, but instead, I found myself in my bathrobe crying on my front porch on live video. For five days, I shared the tears of my heart and my dream of beauty for the earth. And yesterday with horizon’s help, I began to do my work differently. Yesterday, she and I recorded a new version of Lesson 6 of my Leadership M.A.G.I.C. program. Lesson 6, which is the cave, the facing of one’s deepest self, the naming of the wound. Before camp, this part of the program was a funeral. A naming of an old belief that had to die. And my students wrote beautiful eulogies and break-up letters that they tore up and set aflame as they transformed themselves and their workplace culture. It was a beautiful ritual. But yesterday, horizon and I laid out the tarot cards on the floor and looked at card number 6, which is the Lovers. And then horizon and I changed Lesson 6 into the ritual that I have been wanting to lead for years: An ancestral unburdening of the deep wounds that have been handed down to us, that are not ours. And then a wedding. A loving embrace and marriage of all our parts and ourselves.
And, of course, in preparing that lesson, I had to do the work.
And horizon, best friend, witch, trauma healer extraordinaire, priestessed for me. She gave me a gift I never could’ve dreamed of: she allowed my parts to come to the surface, one by one:
The six year old me , that was afraid that if I show people who I really am and let them in, they will leave me. (I held her. I invited her into my heart.)
The 46 year old me who is terrified that if she stops working for one second, she will lose her home . (I thanked her. She kept me safe in a time of great terror. I stayed with her as she told me about how scary it is to let people help, because what if they let us down and we lose everything? I stayed with her. Until she slowly allowed herself to sit, and then recline on a lawn chair. By the end, she had a mint and cucumber soda in her hand.)
Of course, this all involved a LOT of crying.
After crying barely at all in recent years, I am doing it all the time these days. It is true that it is better to cry when it is necessary then to create a pressure cooker of my body to hold it in. But it is still exhausting. (In the tarot reading that broke my heart open, Urania said work every day, cry every night. Many baths, so much water.)
So horizon and I went to the lake and immersed ourselves in the beautiful blue waters, then went back to her house and recorded the trance together, the ancestral unburdening for my cohort. The small group of close friends and dear clients, who are going through the next version of Leadership M.A.G.I.C. the one I am making now.
The one that will have a wedding, instead of a funeral.
When I woke up this morning, I looked at the clock, wondering – have I slept too much? Do I have time to do all the things that I need to do today?
And then I took a deep breath. I turned towards that 46 year old part of myself and reminded her that I am not alone. I am doing my work with a Will of Witches. And together we turned over and went back to sleep until the sun rose over the eastern ridge, and shown its light on the silver glory of spiderwebs on a fir tree.