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.)

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.')