First Impressions

(Dated August 24th, 2016)

Finally had a chat with Mama Hecate last night. I was pretty exhausted due to not having slept the night before, so I asked her not to expect too much of me.It took me a while to get my spiritual space set up, as my altar needed some MAJOR cleaning and dusting. I also had to do last-minute research on certain herbs and gemstones. I had totally forgotten if my black crystals were jet, onyx, obsidian, black tourmaline, or Apache's tear (turns out I had all but the Apache's tear!).

Also, I had a pot of tea brewing, a hodgepodge of Hekate's favorite herbs. Here's the recipe I concocted:

1 tbsp. jasmine flowers
1/2 tsp. spearmint
1 tsp. lavender flowers
1 inch cinnamon stick
1 tbsp. chamomile
1 tsp. lemon verbena

Additional herbs that are safe to use: mullein, vervain, mugwort.

Put ingredients in a French press and add hot water. You can also use your coffee maker or just make the tea loose leaf and then strain it. Add honey if you wish. I prefer mine neat. I filled a sake cup with the tea as a libation to place on my altar.

I'm still deciding on the final setup of my altar to Hekate, but here are the basics of what I did:

The altar is next to my bedroom door. I don't have a lot of space so I make do with what I have. In lieu of an altar cloth I laid a gauzy red scarf on my small, half-moon table. From left to right:incense and burner; abalone shell with sage and sweetgrass bundle; in the center, a mirror, in front of which I have three tea lights, and in front of that I placed my pentacle disc, and upon that I perched a black taper in a holder. To the right of all this I set a small vial of red wine, a black seven day candle, and my pendulum box. I had placed to tarot cards from the Connolly tarot deck on my altar as well, The High Priestess and The Hermit. I feel that these two cards most accurately describe the state in which I approach Hekate at this time.

To attain maximum witchy ambience, my next task was peppering the room with candles and turning out the lights. Poof! Instant underworld! Throw in some jasmine incense and you've got the perfect atmosphere for encountering the Lady of the Crossroads. Seated on a poofy ottoman, uncomfortably skyclad I had the A/C on), I had all of the trappings perfect.

Next came the hard part.

What exactly does one expect to happen when attempting to chat with a deity? I had no clue what I was doing. I decided to use my tool of choice, words, and introduced myself to Hekate Soteira. I made it pretty darn clear what my intentions were in contacting her, including making sure to note that she asked me to call. Being an empath, I can detect some level of energy fluctuation, but my stupid ADD makes meditating entering a state of trance almost impossible to accomplish. Most of the "phone call" was me undergoing introspection therapy, and through that rambling I realized that I really don't know what it is I want.

Happiness? Security? Communion with the Divine? What the hell, I don't know!

I had dressed a small black taper, carved with my magickal name, and waited until it burned out to tie things up. Trixy, my black cat and snuggly familiar, asked to enter the bedroom at one point, so I introduced her to Hekate as well.

I'm afraid that I don't have a spirit-altering encounter to record here. The ritual was pretty mundane in comparison to what I was hoping for. Not that it was a waste of time, far from that. I suppose I've been thinking that I could enter a different state of consciousness if I did everything right and maybe through that I could understand a little better what I am doing in the dark. But really, if you find what you are searching for within minutes of starting out, then you just weren't paying attention to begin with!

I expect there will be many more one-sided conversations between here and connection.

(8-24-16, 3:50 p.m.)

Hekate, Hecate, Hekitty

Sleep has been eluding me this past week, and I think I am beginning to understand why.

The damn full moon.

I am usually pretty stoked with the energy of the waxing moon, but it has never been this intense. Only a few seconds ago I had an illumination as to why it's driving me up the walls.

Perhaps I'm being forced to stay awake all night for a reason. And I think it has to do with Hekate.

When I was doing research for my last blog post about the Dark Night of the Soul, I came upon a hoard of cool, interrelated concepts; John of the Cross' poem and commentary, Jung's idea of "ego death," and the Thelemic concept of the Night of Pan. But the concept that drew me in through a series of links and Google searches was katabasis.

Katabasis is a Greek word that means "descent," or "retreat." It is most commonly used in literary analysis to describe a descent into the Underworld, an archetype that Joseph Campbell extrapolated upon in his analysis of the Hero's Journey. The Journey to the Underworld appears in myths the world over. I'll bullet point a few:

- Ishtar descending to Irkalla to retrieve her husband, Tammuz
- Odysseus' journey to find Tiresias
- Aeneas and the golden branch
- Dante's voyage through the circles of Hell with Virgil
- Orpheus's search for Eurydice
- Persephone's yearly descent to Hades
- Gilgamesh going to Irkalla to find Utnipishtam
- Merlin in the crystal cave
- Gandalf falling with the Balrog in the mines of Moria (hey, it counts!)
- Romeo and Juliet in the Capulet crypt

The instance of katabasis that I am most familiar with is that of Persephone. When I was rereading her story, I was struck by a figure whom I had often pushed to the side or otherwise benignly ignored.

Who is Hekate?

Hekate, who has so many epithets that I don't want to list them, is predominantly referred to as the goddess of the crossroads and the Queen of the Witches. It is she who was the witness to Persephone's abduction by Hades (Helios was there, but he was a dick and didn't do anything about it, he even thought the match was a good idea), she who bears the news to Demeter, and it is she who guides the goddess of springtime to and from the realm of the dead each year. She is often depicted in modern renditions as a crone, but to the Ancient Greeks up until the 20th century she was considered a maiden goddess. Apparently the Church liked to demonize pretty goddesses by making them old (they were idiots to think that was an insult anyway).

Anyway, sleep. Full moon. Hekate.

I have felt for some time that I am at a crossroads in my life. Within the past few months, the word "crossroads" itself has impressed itself in my consciousness like a glaring neon light. I have been using it in conversation to describe what is happening to me. Right now, basically this past year, everything is in flux. My dad was diagnosed with terminal cancer two months ago. My parents are looking to sell my childhood home. I had to drop out of graduate school when I realized that the discipline I chose really didn't suit me and my ambitions. My love life is just depressing, I won't even go there. I have hit so many dead ends trying to find a second job. Bills are piling up and I barely make enough money to buy food and medicine, and I more often than not have to pick between the two. I don't know if I want to be a performer anymore, and I can't stick to a writing project even if I'm being paid.

There are so many paths laid out before me, but I have no idea which one I should tread. And a few paths which I thought were necessary now have been blocked with "DO NOT ENTER" signs. What I need is a light, a torch, a guide through the darkness in which I find myself.

I think I need Hekate.

I have been thinking of her this past week. My therapist even mentioned knowing a guided meditation to Hekate that she thought would be helpful for me, if she can find it (our Google search came up empty).

And weirdest of all, Hekate first came to me three days before her feast day last Saturday, August 13th, which I randomly read about when fiddling around online. I had the opportunity to make her a cake and placed it beneath the old gate that joins my house with my parents' big old Victorian. It was around midnight. I laid the sweet, spicy, rich cake in the dirt as Asteria's stars gazed down upon my odd little ceremony, and I felt the darkness envelop me. It was pretty chill. No big revelation, no voices in the wind, just swatting away moths on a cool-ish summer night as my bare feet got all messy on the dusty brick pathway.

Hekate keeps inviting me to chat with her, but I keep putting it off. I suck at meditating and spiritual communication, so I make up all sorts of excuses not to do it. "My ADD won't let me concentrate!" is the main one. And it is kind of true. It can be scary to shut out external noise and focus inward. Maybe I'm afraid of becoming bored, which would be insulting to whatever facet of Spirit I am communing with.

Tonight, on the full moon (which I learned is called the "Sturgeon Moon"), I have plans with my empath bestie to do some witchy things. I will shove aside my nervousness and just go for it. I'll call up Hekate and see if she wants to have a heart-to-heart. With my recent experiences navigating the dark, I won't expect too much, but hey, maybe it's the breakthrough I need.

Then perhaps I will be able to sleep.

Blessed be, cats and kits.

*****

Sources:
κατάβασις

noun, plural katabases  [kuh-tab-uh-seez] (Show IPA)
1.
a march from the interior of a country to the coast, as that of the 10,000 Greeks after their defeat and the death of Cyrus the Younger at Cunaxa.
2.

a retreat, especially a military retreat.
1830-40; < Greek katábasis a going down, descent, equivalent to kataba-(stem of katabaínein to go down) + -sis -sis. See kata-, basis

Lappin, Linda. "Your Journey to Hell and Back."Pokkoli.  http://www.pokkoli.org/files/Katabasis_The_Writer.pdf

d'Este, Sorita. "Is She the Crone? Hekate's Profanation?" Patheos, 11 Aug. 2016,
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/adamantinemuse/2016/08/is-she-the-crone-hekates-profanation/

Bingo Night of the Soul

One of the few times I've played Bingo, I got a blackout. And wow, was it great in a mediocre sort of way.

Being ADD, it kind of sucked to sit through all the number and letter combinations being called, and repeated, for those not paying attention. There were times when I wanted to just give the hell up and go get more pancakes (this was at Pancakes and Bingo night in college. Self-explanatory.). Anyway, when I got a blackout I scored bag of cheap plastic toys from the Dollar Store and a pencil with one of those rubber aliens that fuck around while you try to do homework.

A Dark Night of the Soul is kind of like that, but the actual game sucks harder and the prizes are a lot better than crappy alien pen hats.

*****

I'm a skeptic at heart, and it kind of sucks.

There are times when all that "love and light" shit makes sense to me, and elsetimes it just sounds stupid. Trite. Meme-like. But that's none of my business.

Anyway, as witchy and spiritually-oriented as I am I can't help but try and rationalize the purpose of magickal workings. Sort of like psychoanalyzing my spiritual practice. When I feel the twinge of power outside of myself, or an altered state of consciousness, is it a placebo effect? Are my trances psychosomatic? I really wish I could push those intruding notions aside, but they are sort of rooted in me like a malignant kind of parasite. I guess doubt is kind of parasitic. But at the same time, it exists for a reason.

Doubt is a facet of instinct, and instinct is what kept our ancestors alive long enough to evolve and carry on a lineage. I really do think that a certain amount of skepticism is healthy. How often do we hear about somebody who adhered to their religion or political ideals so much that they hurt people who didn't believe the same as they did? Just check the front page of your least-favorite news website. Actually, don't. You know it's gonna be there.

Skepticism sometimes works in a way that actually reaffirms the beliefs we doubted before. There was a cool dude named John of the Cross who wrote a beautiful metaphorical poem about finding truth through doubt. He called it "The Dark Night of the Soul." In this poem (and adjoining commentary) he likened the person searching for the Divine through the darkness of doubt to a lover searching in the night for her beloved. It's damn beautiful. Some of the greatest luminaries and mystics went through periods of intense skepticism. Thérèse of Lisieux, Paul of the Cross, Mother Theresa of Calcutta all went through it.

Yes, I just listed a bunch of Catholics, but I'll remind you that I was raised in Mother Rome's brood since I was a chicklet and some things are just base knowledge at this point. 16 plus years of theological study, ahoy! And spirituality really transcends religion, doesn't it? By the way, speaking of enlightenment, a fabulous non-Christian example of someone who found the light in the darkness was Buddha Shakyamuni. Kind of an obvious one. I'd love to hear from you about luminaries from other religions who have experienced the Dark Night in some form or other. Post in the comments!

I think I've been in my own Dark Night since I was a late teen. It weirdly coincided with my depression getting really bad*. Before the Dark Night came around, I was pretty connected with my spirituality. I was a cradle Catholic and just dipping my toes into pagan waters with a couple of friends at our Catholic high school. I still felt something when I prayed the rosary or communicated with faeries. Then all of a sudden, nothing. I was pretty lost at first, but I've since become pretty calm when faced with my spiritual shadow. Not having those tingles in my soul makes it much easier to think rationally about philosophies that I had previously taken for granted, and as such I was able to weed out thoughts and practices that didn't jive with me. It led me toward Buddhism and Christian mysticism as well as ancient Celtic philosophies.

It can still be disappointing when I chat with spiritually attuned friends about their experiences (I have a very close friend who is a fellow empath as well as a budding medium, and she is able to tune in to Spirit in a way that I currently am blocked from). I want to feel that connection. But I just gently remind myself that I'm on a different trail leading back to the main Path. And weirdly, I have finally been able to connect in small ways this past year or so. I'll post more on that later.

When I was in session with my therapist yesterday we got on the topic of the Dark Night of the Soul. She gave me some good validation as only a shrink can, explaining that the Night was basically a form of introspection, like the Jungian idea of the assimilation of the shadow self. I won't get too much into that, since my aim is spirituality and not psychology (though I do enjoy studying the latter). But it is definitely something I'd like to revisit at another time.

The Dark Night is not that scary. I'm just making my way through in order to get that alien pet hat.

*****

"The dark night of the soul comes just before revelation. When everything is lost, and all seems darkness, then comes the new life and all that is needed."
Joseph Campbell, from A Joseph Campbell Companion: Reflections on the Art of Living

"There is no coming to consciousness without pain. People will do anything, no matter how absurd, to avoid facing their own soul. One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious." - Carl Jung

*(NOTE: a Dark Night of the Soul and depression are very different things. This link provides a good explanation and distinction between the two ((http://www.everydayhealth.com/columns/therese-borchard-sanity-break/depression-dark-night-soul/)). I do NOT condone replacing psychiatric treatment with religion. Just sayin.')

Witchcraft. As best as I can.

I'm a lazy, broke, ADD witch.

I'd like to paint myself as some sort of polished esoteric scholar, or even just well-versed in rune-working, but I need to face it. Half of the time I have no idea what I am doing.

I grab a handful of herbs from the spice cabinet and hope that oregano substitutes for marjoram.
Esbats sometimes pass by completely unnoticed.

I have no idea where I put my athame...or if a decorative blade from the Renaissance Faire even qualifies as an athame (it's probably in storage, actually).

Thanks to Kansas' broken economy and a Bachelor's degree in English I often can't afford supplies so I make do with what I have. No red candles? Well then, I'll just smother this white taper with acrylic paint and hope for the best. Okay, I was being facetious there. Anyway, I'm pretty good at improvising.

What magick really boils down to is, in my opinion, intention. Yes, the trappings are pretty specific for a reason, but if you live in a small town it might be difficult to come by dragon's blood resin unless you order it online. I like to imagine that Spirit gives us a pass when we are doing the best we can. Things are doubly hard for spoonies, i.e. those of us with chronic illness, physical or mental, and going through an entire ritual can be draining enough, especially as an empath. Some days it's all I can do to shuffle my tarot cards.

So let this blog be a place where the poor and the half-hearted may find respite from a world insistent upon perfection. I'm pretty eclectic in my practice so don't expect me to follow a specific path. Ain't nobody got time for that.

Words are a form of magick themselves, so you will also find that I post poetry, short stories, and I even write my own spells from time to time. Feel free to borrow the spells and alter them to suit your needs, just give me a smidge of credit is all I ask.

ALSO, BIG IMPORTANT THING THAT REQUIRES CAPITAL LETTERS:

Trust your intuition, kids. If something doesn't feel right, don't do it. You evolved those gut instincts for a reason. Working magick is the perfect time to try and hone those instincts into a valuable tool you can apply to most areas of your life. This BIG IMPORTANT THING is doubly important if you work with spirits and entities outside of yourself. I don't use Ouija boards for a reason, and that reason is that I have a baaad feeling about them. I add a candle to certain rituals because I have this nagging sensation that I should add a bit of illumination to the atmosphere. A lot of the time we think we have to adhere dogmatically to the recipe, but sometimes a little less sugar or a little more frankincense is just what is needed.

My cousin, Fr. Eamonn O'Conghaile, is an Irish Catholic priest in Connemara. He is also a seanchai, a keeper of our clan's oral tradition, very similar to the ancient bards. He has a beautiful analogy that I try to employ whenever I think about why people operate differently:

"Everyone is on a journey. Some people take a boat, some ride a bicycle. Others might drive a car or take the train. In the end we all end up in the same place, some fellows just get there sooner than the others."

Blessed be, cats and kits.