Meeting Great-Grandma Margaret

My hometown at the holidays.

I am Sarah, daughter of Margaret, daughter of Patricia, daughter of Margaret, daughter of Eliza, daughter of Mary, daughter of mother unknown. I never knew my Great-Grandma Margaret. Neither did my mom. Margaret Loretta Burke died when her youngest daughter, my Grandma, was eight years old.

The Burkes were Irish immigrants, who moved into Western New York to help carve the Erie Canal out of the bedrock. In doing my genealogy research, I discovered that the Burke family had lived on the same street since coming to the town, for multiple generations, mostly in the same house. That house was right around the corner from where I grew up. I realized that I must have passed it every day while visiting my childhood best friend. (I also learned that Margaret worked as a glove maker before she married in 1913.)

When I was home for the winter holidays I took a walk at dusk, amid the mounding snow, to see if the house was still standing. I had hoped it was. I had imagined that I would see it and say, oh, this house!, as if we had some previously unexplained bond. Or, at the least, that I would be able to touch the rail and say, my people lived here once. My Great-Grandmother dreamed here once.

But there was no house on the lot. Whatever had existed there, didn’t anymore. There was a newer house on a double lot set slightly back from the road, the only modern house in comparison to the other homes on the street. The lot my Great-Grandma’s house would have been on, sat at the extreme right side of the house (when facing it), and where the driveway is.

The funniest thing about that house, though, is that it’s only one of two houses on that block I have seen the inside of. One night when I was a kid, I was invited to a slumber party at that house for a girl I didn’t know very well yet. I remember sitting in her bedroom and talking. We played games and I won a Men Without Hats album. I realize now that when I slept that night, I was laying over the Burke family land. The girl’s bedroom was right where the lot would have been- 154 Washington Street.

In retrospect, that is pretty cool.

My spiritual work involves magic, which I consider to be the manifestation of our desires through action. The act of searching for my family and ancestral history has been helpful in creating doorways that have allowed me to better connect to the spirit world. When I took that cold winter walk around the corner to find my Great-Grandma’s home, I opened a doorway to that spiritual energy. 

Two months later, I met my Great-Grandma Margaret in the dream world.

I am at an event, like a wedding or a family reunion. There are a lot of people here. I am at a bar table, talking to a woman with a young face… about my age. She has short, curled bangs and her hair is curled up at the ends around her face. I cannot tell if it is short or if it is pinned up. In this room of people, she glows with a Technicolor hue (a sign for me it is spirit). Her hair is glowing a dark, deep chestnut.

I have a moment of clarity within the dream and I ask her pointedly, with a knowing, if she is Margaret. She says yes, staring into my eyes. She smiles at me. She says her name is Margaret. I tell her that she looks younger than I ever remember my Grandma being. She asks me how my Grandma is doing, squeezing my wrist warmly with her hand. She is very still in this room of movement, but I sense a nervousness beneath the exterior, as if I have called her here and she is not sure why.

I have a dream-memory of having seen my Grandmother earlier that night and I tell Great-Grandma Margaret how she seemed to me. In the dream I am worried about my Grandma and I think maybe this is why I have called her here. I say as much to Margaret and I thank her for coming to meet me. I tell her that my mother was also named Margaret. She thanks me and touches my face. She leaves to go and check on Patricia. The party continues, but the Technicolor edge is gone. The spirit has left the dream room.

Experiencing Death VII: There in the Room

When my Grandfather died in 2004, I was blessed to be there in the room with him. I had missed saying goodbye to my Grandma, a guilt I still carried with me. He had known that, those years in between, and I believe he waited for me to fold time to get there, where he lay unconscious on the bed. His eyes stirred momentarily beneath his closed lids at the sound of my voice and then slowed again. It could have been days, sitting beside him, we were told. I didn’t think it would be. He felt ready to go, and the spirits were gathering close.

Those of us in the room were midwifing death, whether we wanted to or not. Those who stand at a threshold and guard the way between are charged with a sacred task, whether it’s life coming into or out of our world. You don’t have to know what you’re doing to hold space for the dying- and I’m not talking about people who can be saved medically. I’m talking about those on their deathbed. I’m even talking about animals dying at the side of the road. I’m talking about stepping up to face the unknown one last time with someone, when there is no hope left. When the doctor says days and hours instead of weeks and months.

I wasn’t alone in that room. Each of us could tell a very different story of what happened within that final minute in the hospital room. Every single one of those stories is true. Mine just happens to be fraught with more joy and awe than loss and sorrow, which was not what I expected when I entered. My story is the one I’m sharing.

Midwives are best known for birthing babies and bringing lives into this world, bringing spirits into being. Birth is a physical science that is truly magical to me, and all magic comes with a price. With birth, when the being that has been living in the womb for nine months, comes crying out into the world, fully articulated, it’s magic. And with birth comes pain, and afterwards, much joy.

And in death, when the spirit leaves and the physical body finally shuts down, it comes with extreme sorrow and emptiness. It carves out a hollow space inside us that those loved ones left behind, as if that person literally held space within our emotional body. These are the prices we pay for the experience of being human. Because I was able to accept what was coming, and for having the courage to wish my Grandpa peace, even though I could not imagine living without him, I was given a gift.

I am sensitive to spirit world but I never see anything more than what I call emotional shadow. I saw more when I was younger. It’s true that children and animals see more than we grown-ups do, though I personally do not believe that has always been true. When we hit puberty, there is so much expectation on us to fit into our societal constructs that we sever that connection ourselves if we have it. We sever anything of ourselves that makes us different, weird or strange. Something that I hope will change.

My Grandpa’s actual death took a moment. In the span of that second, my Grandpa took a breath in and out, so imperceptible my sister had her hand over his chest and heart to gauge it. And that was it. My partner and I had been singing softly, preparing ourselves for what was to come and opening the way for him, in our hearts, to cross when he was ready. May he be free from pain.

I was sitting just to the left of the foot of his bed. Beside me, a doorway on the wall opened up. Through the doorway poured this wash of green light. It was warm and made the room smell like summer. The March evening smelled like hot tilled earth and peppery tomatoes. I smelled my Grandma, who had passed four years earlier. I heard her clear her throat, tapping her foot, waiting for him. What I would describe as his soul leapt from my Grandpa’s body in human form, with joyful abandon. And then it became a cloud of smoke which swam into the green energy and in a swirl it was gone. The door was closed beside me.

The room was cold and empty, though the number of bodies hadn’t changed. It was over. He was gone.

My partner and I had been singing softly, honoring his life, expressing what he meant to us with voice. But not only that. I was also doing it to accept the grace of understanding that his freedom from sickness meant that I would feel sorrow and pain. May that grace help me to heal.

After that experience, I can imagine the spiritual growth that might also come from being on the living side of death’s door. To be the person who helps birth the spirit into other world at the end of someone’s life. Or even to be someone who simply watches it happen. To sit at a bedside with someone who might otherwise be alone, so that they can cross unafraid. I believe that how you let go of your time in this world is important to what comes after.

Since my Grandpa’s death, I light candles at night for those who die alone and afraid, that their souls might find peace and move on. I do this because I know, even at my young age, that a time will come when I will sit at the bedsides of people I love as they die. More than anything I wish to build up the courage and strength to find the grace in the blessing of being with them at the end of this life and the beginning of whatever comes next.

Relevant Posts:

The Beginning I Saw in the End (published March 23, 2011)

Eulogy I Wish I’d Given (published March 14, 2012)

Experiencing Death: The Unborn Baby (published May 16, 2012)

Experiencing Death II: My Father’s Father (published June 13, 2012)

Experiencing Death III: Squirrel in the Road (published July 11, 2012)

Experiencing Death IV: The Body at Daggett Lake (published August 15, 2012)

Experiencing Death V: Suicide (published September 9, 2012)

Experiencing Death VI: Alone with the Dead (published October 17, 2012)

Crafting Spirit Stones

Early in my practice, I relied heavily on the use of tools to connect with the larger natural world. Without them I wouldn’t have evolved such a deep understanding of the interconnected web. When I was learning how to trust my intuition, I used divination as a means to verify what I thought I was sensing. In the pagan world, we often use divination as a means of interacting with the spirit world to help clarify events and situations.

In our daily lives, it’s difficult to be in a situation and see it clearly, so we seek advice from friends or mentors to help us gauge how best to proceed. When we’re asking for guidance on the human plane, the best place to look for it is spirit world. For me it’s almost a therapeutic interaction. In Psychology, Cognitive Touch Therapy is used to help your body ferret out truths your mind is trying to keep you from. Your muscles betray your subconscious lies. Just like that, divination helps me tap into my intuitive body and see more clearly things I already know.

I am not psychic, not at all. But I have a high-sensitivity to the spirit world, which is why I have the interactions with ghosts that I have. The spirit world is active around us all the time and the more closely you vibrate in accord with the natural world, the more you will see some of what remains invisible to others. Divination acts like a translation tool between the energies you tap into and our own human language.

No one can say for certain if the energy used for divination comes from an external spirit world alive around us or whether it’s from an internal ancient knowledge that lives within our bloodstream. I believe it’s both. We humans are the conduits between earth and sky, the vessel that meets within and without. In my practice, magic and science are close relatives. I see divining as a gift of guidance, accessible when our intuition is finely tuned to the natural world.

I spent years looking into and studying different forms of divination: tarot, runes, ogham, scrying, obi, palmistry, reading tea leaves. The more help the divination tool used to speak to me, with the use of elaborate visuals or concrete definitions, the more unsure I was as to what I was intuiting versus what I was interpreting, so it was clear that for me, a simple casting method would work best. I began to understand that the way I was intuitively communicating with the spirit world was not represented well enough with any divining medium I learned. The spirit world I interact with and the work I do is not bound to a specific culture. My own ancestral lineage spans multiple cultures. I needed something with both an ancient history and a broad scope. I had to find my own language.

I found myself drawn to the form of casting lots. Many cultures throw bones as divination. It was a simple enough concept and memories of childhood games of Yahtzee made it an enticing one. As far as connecting to spirit, stone pulls me in best and helps me reach that vibration. To me stones are the bones of the earth, the layer where the ancestors are buried. It is that layer within and without I am trying to contact so I looked to throwing stones instead.

I chose to throw seven, as it is a magical number for me and one that resonates with my ancestor work. One stone would represent the intention, situation or question. Then I chose six stones, three of one kind and three of another, two sides of a coin. I used snowflake obsidian for my intention stone, which I used for meditations often, and snow quartz and black obsidian as the six vibration stones.

You can’t just get stones and cast them and expect answers. You have to create a relationship with them first. I spent a moon cycle with the snowflake obsidian, wearing it in trance as a means of harmonizing it to my frequency. I spent a moon cycle with the snow quartz, charging them with clarity, with yes, with light and harmony. I spent a moon cycle with the obsidian and charged them with confusion, mystery, chaos and caution. Then I spent one last moon cycle charging them with the energy of web and interconnectedness, dedicating them to my ancestors. I made them all equal parts of importance in a hive mind.

When I cast them, I ask yes or no questions. I chose to interpret them in a common way, similar to obi (divination with coconut or cowrie shells). The closer my question stone is to more white stones, the more favorable/true/positive the answer. The closer my question stone is to more black stones, the more unfavorable/false/unknown the answer, with all the myriad of uncertainty in between. It suits me and allows me to trust myself.

I make petitions of my ancestors, when I need guidance from them, when I need them to send energy to a specific situation, and I use the stones to speak to them. What do they need from me? What do they ask of me? Am I doing enough to honor them? Do they hear me when I can’t hear them? Just like my candle is the lighthouse I burn to call on them, the stones have become the medium I use to hear from them. It works for me, part of the path I have built for myself. It’s important to me that everyone finds their own way to meet and engage with spirit. It is the experience of working on your spirituality that builds trust within yourself, so that you may learn to trust in what you are experiencing.

Spirit World: A Haunting at White Street

What follows is a true story that happened to me in college after the house I was living in had been empty for a month. I’ve tried not to embellish. It’s not a horror story. It’s just my story.

I was living in a house off-campus with friends. It was winter break and I was at home with my family. One of my housemates called me late at night. She’d gone back to school early and was alone in our house. She was downstairs watching television and heard someone walking down the hallway upstairs. She was spooked enough that she called me to tell me she wasn’t going up there until it was light out. She was not someone prone to moments like that. So when she said she heard footsteps, while she was talking to me, I believed her.

The next day I went back earlier than I had planned only to find that she hadn’t stayed. I walked into an empty house late at night and took my groceries into the kitchen. I put the stuff that needed to go in the fridge away and left the rest in the paper bag on the counter until morning. I loved that kitchen. There was a small pantry space with floor to ceiling wooden doors, like small ornate cubbies. And then in the kitchen proper were the normal cabinets and sink and, like every good college house, a stove whose pilot light had to be re-lit every other day.

I went upstairs to my bedroom, fell asleep, and had a weird dream… my landlord brought a work crew into the house to install a security system that was really like spyware. He didn’t think anyone was home. In the dream, the installation woke me up and I went downstairs to see what was going on and chased him out of the house for being there without permission.

Our landlord wasn’t the kind of person to actually allow himself into the house like other landlords I’ve had, but he did drive by every day, out of his way, to make sure we weren’t burning the place down. (One time he did wake us at 7 am with the soothing sounds of a table saw in the basement, which he had designated as his personal storage room.) So it wasn’t the context of the dream that was strange. It was the realness of how it felt, more like déjà vu than a dream.

I woke to the sound of the television on downstairs, blaring the studio audience from Jerry Springer or Jenny Jones- some show like that. Maybe my housemate had come back, I thought. But I knew that if she had she would have woken me up to tell me so. I bolted out of bed, reaching for a nearby hammer.

As soon as my feet hit the floor I woke up. But the sound of the television was clearer and louder, not fading into dream world. My heart was thudding in my chest and I went to my bedroom door trying to calm myself down.

I opened the door and the television was blaringly loud. I took a breath and stepped out into the hallway and the house became utterly still, pin-drop silent. Now I was confused. I stepped back into my bedroom and the television sounds blared back to life in the living room beneath me. I hopped back and forth a few times but it was consistent- silence in the hallway, sounds of life downstairs in my bedroom. In one of those screw-your-courage-to-the-sticking-place moments, I hefted my hammer and crept downstairs slowly through the quiet that met me when I passed through the bedroom doorway.

The house was empty. The first thing I did was check the front door but everything was locked up as I’d left it the night before. The second thing I did was check the television. It was cold, not even remotely warm. I held my breath and turned it on to some morning news program. I relaxed and laughed at myself a bit, then moved to check the other rooms to be sure all was well.

Inside the kitchen, every single cupboard door in the pantry was standing open, including the ones none of us could reach. The fridge door was hanging open. The freezer door was open. The kitchen cupboards above the sink were wide open and all of the cupboard doors below the counter and sink were open. The items I had left in the brown grocery bag were outside of it, lined up on the counter in a row.

I ran to the door leading down into the basement assuming there’d been a break-in. But it was still double-locked, insuring no one could get in from the other side. I left everything where it was and went back up to my bedroom, with my hammer. I locked the door behind me and called another friend to talk through what happened. Four hours later she was at my door, also back to school earlier than planned.

She saw the kitchen and we went to my room so I could pack a quick bag. She was sitting, facing my doorway, when I heard footsteps in the hall. So did she. I saw her face drain of color as the footsteps passed by the doorway. My friend saw a shadowy shape. We both listened to the footsteps going up the attic stairs. We left quickly and I stayed away until my other housemates came back and the house was full again.

There was nothing afterwards.

Looking Back

I think it’s important to note that at the time, I never felt unsafe or that my life was in danger. It was still a little too close to the line of “unexplainable” and that’s what scared me. That’s what I didn’t want to be alone with. Any doubt I had disappeared in the shared experience with my friend. It happened. I can’t explain it, but to erase it from my history, for that reason alone, would be a worse tragedy.

What I think now, is that he was a lonely spirit, still attached to his humanity, who got restless when the house was empty. Maybe it was too clear a reminder that he existed separate from the living world. Once the house was full again he was quiet. I don’t know if he was attached to the house or drawn to our energy, or just passing through.

I think about that moment often as one I can’t explain away, and one I don’t need to. I’m not afraid of things that go bump in the night. I only want to know their stories.

Spirit World: Afraid of What Lies in the Dark

Ghosts.

It’s a double-edged word. It literally means “spirit of the dead” and that is its true definition. Culturally, the word carries a negative connotation. Ghost has a history behind it of propagating fear and keeping people away. One of the reasons I use it in the context of my work is because I want people to understand a simple truth. Every feared apparition is someone’s ancestor. Every ghost was once a living, breathing person, like you and me.

When people are afraid of ghosts and ghost stories, it often leads to their being afraid of spirits, the spirit world and ancestor work. Only once in all of my workings have I encountered what I would call a malevolent spirit, one that scared me. It does happen, but it was more echo-of-emotional-anger and less disembodied spirit. That’s once in over thirty years of encountering something I perceived as dangerous and with the help of my Women of Spirit group from my Unitarian-Universalist church, we performed a house cleansing and blessing and consecrated our home, sending it away.

I know adults who are afraid of the dark, afraid of the idea of ghosts and afraid of ghost stories (especially real ones). I also know adults who sit in fear of anything past the boundary of what is known and familiar to them, natural or supernatural. It has become the human condition to be afraid of what we can’t explain or see. But we limit ourselves by depending on one sensory interpretation. There is more than the world we know.

I think it’s important to challenge ourselves in the ways that we are able, to face our fears, work through them and emerge stronger people in new skins. The spirit world exists, and often the vapors and echoes of human life are all around us- even if we take no notice of them.

There is a moment in the film The Empire Strikes Back when Luke is faced with entering a dark cave alone. He asks his mentor, Yoda, what is in there. Yoda’s answer is simple and powerful and beyond Luke’s comprehension. “Only what you take with you.” So what truly lies in the unknown, waiting for us? The answer is the same. What lies in the dark is we take into the dark with us. The fear that lives inside us is the fear we will find outside ourselves.

When I was a little girl I wanted to believe that my house was haunted. It was over 100 years old and I was sure, in my innocence that it must be. All old things were haunted, right? But it wasn’t. So I would willingly go to places that people said were haunted or where supernatural events had frightened them.

As an early teen I went a few places I shouldn’t have, chasing ghosts. I wanted to believe, to believe there was more. I wanted to see what I was made of- could I face my darkness? After all, I was getting older and the world was growing scarier. Scary things were happening to me in my real life. I allowed myself to feel the fear my friends felt when I had real encounters. I allowed myself to be afraid. It was easier to retreat to a realm of safety by putting walls up and closing my world up.

I can look back at those moments with my adult eyes and understand that it was the opening of myself into the larger world that scared me. Not the ghost or spectre or spirit. I mean, if my neighbor walked by me while gardening and said hello I wouldn’t be afraid of them. The spirit world is simply neighborhood adjacent.

In my experience, when supernatural activity scares us, and we respond in fear, we are closing a door. Most of the frightening activity is not meant to cause terror. Imagine if you found you suddenly couldn’t speak. You would have to learn another way to communicate, right? So spirits who lack corporeal form are trying to find a way to interact. In most cases, that’s all that’s happening. Try acknowledging the experience and most likely, it will stop.

It’s important to know the history of the way we think. The journey is just as important as the destination. One of the terms for a spirit of the dead is shade. Shade. Shadow. Our worlds are made up of a chiaroscuro of light and dark, white and black, and good and bad.

What we must endeavor to find are the shades of grey where they blend and merge. That’s where the truth lives, between what is known and unknown, where stories overlap. The next time you have a moment of feeling something you can’t see, don’t be so quick to dismiss it as impossible. Simply believe in the possibility of the improbable; keep a door to your world open.

Relevant Posts:

Spirit World: Ghost Visitations (published on July 11, 2011)

A Meditation to the Stars

With Solstice behind us, the days are lengthening and every night the sun sets a few minutes later in my office window. In the Northeast we are still in the grip of a cold and dark winter. We wrap ourselves in blankets to warm our bodies. We drink mugs of hot cocoa, cider, tea and coffee to warm our insides. We light candles to warm our homes and blaze against the darkened nights.

In the flurry of winter, we look to the stars in the sky to remind us that there is always light to be found in the darkness. We remember, and know, that those stars still live in the sky above us, even when the sun obscures them from view. Light can always be found, if not outside of us, then within. We become the light in the dark.

            The earth beneath us is sleeping, even though we who walk upon it are in need of healing. The earth is in need of healing, too, still recovering from the flooding that ravaged our area in September. Normally, when we are in need, we pull our energy from the earth and the trees and plant life around us. We take only what we need and find ways to return in kind. Sometimes, the natural world’s needs matter more than our own and the caretaker must rest. Where do we turn for energy when the source we know is unavailable?

            In the stillness of a frozen world, I turn to the stars in the sky. Starlight is the ultimate ancestor fuel. It is history, a memory of light that began its journey across space and time in the past. The light we see in the sky, that moment of brilliance, has already ceased to shine by the time we view it. The star still shines, certainly, but that moment, that spark is long behind it and what we see is an echo. The light that permeates the dark is the Ancestor of the present moment, a conduit of luminous energy reaching out to us.

The closest star to our solar system, Proxima Centauri, is approximately four lightyears away, which means that the light we see from that star is four years old the moment we glimpse it. Polaris, the North Star, is 680 lightyears away so the light that twinkles down on us is 680 years old. That means the light originated approximately 9 generations ago.

Almost all of the stars that we see with our naked eye are a few hundred lightyears away, shining with light a few hundred years old, about four generations worth. It’s light that began its travel across the sky when my Great-great-grandparents walked the earth. It’s light born of their time, travelling across empty space to reach me in my time.

A scattering of the stars we can see are as much as 2,000 lightyears away. That’s approximately 25 generations old, our ancestors who walked the earth circa 12 C.E., before Vesuvius erupted and froze Pompeii under ash. What lands did your ancestors walk then? This light is only just now visible to our eyes, available for our use.

            I stand, slippered feet on wooden floorboards in my apartment. I feel the cold of the earth beneath my feet. I feel the chill seeping into my apartment. I take a deep breath and reach into the cold with my roots. I sink into the energy of the earth and feel it sleeping beneath me.

I become Tree, curling into earth. I feel my breath drawing in slow and deep, one breath, as if the entire season of winter is an inhale. I become an entire grove of trees breathing in unison and when we exhale, I know we will breathe out the warmth of spring.

            I am rooted in the earth, arms stretching up into the winter air. Above me thousands of stars twinkle in the night sky. Across the eons of time I sense energy, not heat, but power, source, strength. All of my arms sense it too and I am reaching past the boundaries of my edges to drink it in. I inhale deep and long. I hold the air in my heart, filling me and warming my core.

            As the human of me exhales, I drop the energy I don’t need down through my legs, through my feet, into the sleeping earth. I give back in gratitude for all I have been given. My human breath falls away to earth.

I am vulnerable, naked like the winter trees that lose their leaves. My feet are solid in the soil, roots curling through stone. I feel the stars swimming through the water of me. I am human. I am animal. I am nature.

All that I am stands strong, drinks in, refuels and falls away to earth. Everything but breath falls away to earth. The breath is the rhythm of the tides, the pulsing of light across empty space. The Ancestors are shining above me. Dawn approaches and they fade from sight but they are constant above. I drink what I need and let the rest fall through me into the earth. I am healed and I am healing. I am healer.

            The water in me mirrors and magnifies the brilliance of the stars above and a fire grows within, contained and white-hot. My waters are fire, warming me in veins through tissue and muscle. Edges flow and I feel full to the ends of my flesh. I am starlight shining in skin. I am the end of the timeline, the result of the past, burning through the present. I am breathing in seasons, like time, in and out, ebbing in the waters.

            Our Ancestors are more than our blood relatives. They live in every pocket of the natural world. I am because they were. I am because they will be. I am important because I am here. I am humbled because I do not matter, beyond the matter of this flesh. When I exhale the last time, my soul will cease its matter and will become star-dust, swimming through space to feed the needs of those who come after. We breathe in the wisdom of the ancestors of the past. They are in me and I am in them and in this life it is the only comfort I need.

Walking a Ritual with Beads

In areas where winter means snow and ice and cold, everything seems to quiet down in the natural world around us. It’s a meditation in itself to slow our own daily lives and match pace with the place we live, making it the perfect time of year to focus on connecting to a sleeping, resting world.

It’s easy in the height of verdant summer to feel the heat and passion of life. Often, winter can feel like a long walk over the bones of the dead in a cemetery, so quiet and still. It’s unnerving to some. Truth is, just as the stars live in the sky whether we can see them or not, we walk every day over the bones of our dead. The ancestors are always with us.

I carry that knowledge with me through the holidays, when living family gathers in a whirlwind of joy and love and remembrance. After the chaos it can be difficult to slip back into the quiet of day-to-day. When missing my family is still a bright pang, I turn to my ancestors, the family who walks with me, with each of us, wherever we go. I turn towards strengthening that connection, thinking that maybe in the stillness of a snowy afternoon they can hear my call more clearly.

As a child I loved the rosary. I did not actually use it as it was meant to be used for I did not understand its true intention. Instead I used them to repeat my prayers at night, speaking to the streetlamp outside my bedroom window in the dark, whispering furtively for answers, for guidance. I loved the feel of the beads beneath my fingertips. Each one was a separate prayer, or the same prayer repeated. It was a tangible journey, one foot in front of the other, each step imprinting the message in my heart.

Working with ancestors often feels like speaking to the air, to ether. In the beginning of my work I needed that connector, that thing that joined my prayer with action. I longed for the feel of beads beneath my fingertips, something physical to help separate me from my body and push me into higher consciousness.

I’ve written before about the wooden mala beads I made, one bead for each known ancestor going back seven generations. But what I wanted was a ritual I could work with my hands, something more sacred. Something that reminded me of incense and chanting and temple halls, something to help me find the sacred in a tree grove and the night sky.

Years ago, in an evening of women coming together and doing a piece of spiritual work, we each made a set of beads that spoke to us. We each created a personal set that met our requirements for a personal ritual. All were beautiful. All were sacred. All were different.

I grew up immersed in a natural world with four seasons and my magick moves the same way, like the breath of the trees. So my personal magick often incorporates those seasons. My rituals weave through them to help me reach a heightened consciousness. I used semi-precious gemstone beads to create a ritual my fingers could walk.

Seven fossil beads begin the chain, the layers of ancestors, seven through which to know myself.

Nine beads mark each season, nine to mark what is sacred, three times three, my father, my mother and me.

Moonstone, smooth as silk stands for spring, for heavenly bodies and hope, for the promise of flowers and warmer winds.

One of bone to remember the flesh.

Red Tiger Eye, flashing and radiant as the summer sun, the shimmer of hazy heat and the courage found in youthful hearts.

One of bone to remember the tissue.

Lapis Lazuli for autumn, for the density and depth of water and twilight, of mystery and mist and the power of the veil and what lies beyond.

One of bone to remember the heart.

Moss Agate for winter, for earth and ice and crystal together, caressing and holding and resting and charging.

One of bone to remember the soul.

Then Quartz at the peak, for sight, vision and meditation, for communication. For being and reaching. For here. For now. This is where I speak, where I pray, where I petition, where I sit in silent clarity open to answers and impressions and visitations.

And then back down the path, down the ritual, back down to the beads of fossil of ancestral generations holding me and guiding me and bringing me home.

Equinox Mythos & Mystery

Covering beds for the winter

I watch garden snakes going underground.

The sun retreats from this half of the world,

bodies hibernating through longer nights.

It’s our turn to carry the dark, autumn whispers.

What will you bring with you into dreaming?

Inanna descends into the Underworld, of her own free will. She takes up the journey to meet her sister, Ereshkigal, her shadow self. She will face her hidden half and she will be undone in the dark. But when the dawn comes she will know herself wholly for the first time, and reemerge in her strength and power. What do you see when you face your reflection? Can you breathe in all of the pieces and make a whole image? Do you have the strength to stand naked and unflinching before it?

Unwinding her thread, Ariadne gave her lover the map to the labyrinth beneath the surface of the earth, beneath the surface of her skin. He went to meet her shadow self, her twin brother chained at the center of the labyrinth. The beast we call Minotaur is the primal darkness within her breast, the animal part of her that she hides. She is betrayed as the hero slays the monster, to woo her, to protect her, to impress her. The hero with small vision who cut out her very heart. Do you keep your ugliness hidden from the world? Are you not made more beautiful in the shadow of your flaws? Do you have the strength to expose your vulnerabilities? Can you shed those who would stand in judgment for those who will embrace you as you are?

Persephone leaves the child of springtime behind her as the sands trickle towards autumn. She steps on the path winding into the hillside, away from her mother’s eyes and arms. She leaves her parent’s home, known and fragrant with summer memories, towards the unknown house of her husband, in shadow, where she shall be lover, spouse and woman. She steps lightly on the path. She knows where it is going though she does not know the landscape and she cannot see its end. She trusts that it is the right path. What shades of yourself have you shed in your journey? Have you learned to let them go and accept the changes? Can you be a daughter or son to your parents without being a child? Can you step into uncertainty? Can you keep your feet to your path, though you cannot see the ending?

Orpheus descends to the Underworld in grief, passing where no living being can pass. In love, he wins Eurydice back. But the path out of the darkness is too long and too quiet and he loses faith that she is behind him even though she told him she would be there. He turns around before they reach the sun and she is lost to him forever. Can you face the moments when you slip? Can you take responsibility for your mistakes? Can you rise above them or will you sink into embarrassed despair?

Oya stands at the cemetery gate as the recent dead descend into the ground. She greets them, standing against the flood of their fresh grief. She is the beacon of light calling them to rest. Where does that strength live in you?

Papa Legba stands at the crossroads of dreaming as the ancestors rise to walk the earth again. He stands ready to ferry bargains and deals as we wander through our winter nights. What would you sacrifice to get what you most desire?

Tlazolteotl balances the act of love with the act of defecation, holding both as equally sacred. Sacred in, sacred out. She is the flow between connection and release. One follows the other, like night follows day and day follows night. She walks between for us, holding the memory of light when the darkness overwhelms, and holds the dark so we don’t forget our gratitude for the light.

The veils are thinning. The darkness is winning favor as we turn into autumn. Our mythologies provide us with stories and archetypes we can use to illuminate ways to navigate the path that lies ahead so that we can move forward. What do we learn from these stories? We learn to not fear the dark, but to tread gently through it and embrace it. We should use our personal dark as a space of transformation. Face your twilight reflection and prepare to challenge and test yourself against the chilled slumber of the earth and the lengthening nights.

Covering beds for the winter

I watch garden snakes going underground.

The sun retreats from this half of the world,

bodies hibernating through longer nights.

It’s our turn to carry the dark, autumn whispers.

What will you bring with you into dreaming?

Unexplainable Things Have a Purpose

“If the wonder’s gone when the truth is known

there never really was any wonder.”

~ from the television show House

Unexplainable things have a purpose. It’s something I believe. It’s not the same thing as “everything happens for a reason” because I don’t believe that is true. That’s insinuating that something somewhere is orchestrating the event. In the natural world, things just are and what matters is how we take them. I believe that sometimes the purpose of unexplainable things is just to exist and/or happen, in order to serve as a moment against which we respond and reveal how we react to things unknown. They can be teachable moments, reflecting our vulnerabilities and levels of openness. We cannot control what happens to us all the time. The only control we have is how we respond to it.

Some people think of death as the ultimate unexplainable thing. We try to make sense of it in order to find some solid ground to stand on when we face it but we also meet the stories of those who have come back from death with disbelief and skepticism. We want to know but we want to know and have difficulty accepting an outside voice as truth, assuring that we can never truly have an answer.

Unexplainable things happen but even calling them that is a misnomer. It’s not that they can’t be explained. It’s more that we lack the understanding or language to put the experience into words that make sense. Maybe because we try to put into words something our intuitive bodies just know. We have multiple senses and each of these have their own language and way of responding to and translating the world around us. We spend so much time trying to figure out if what happened to us could have happened to us, we lose sight of the fact that the experience happened at all. Some of these teachable moments are not as grandiose as death. They can be small events that evoke a larger change within us.

In the summer of ’97 on a Smoky Mountain peak, I wandered away from my house at dusk, away from the chaos of all the people and towards the small creek that ran along the property. I was having one of those nights of feeling like there was no place to be alone in a house that 21 people lived in and I was looking for a little inner quiet. I must have sat on the bank of the creek, listening to the gurgling, rippling and singing of the water off the stones for an hour, unmoving, just being.

I almost didn’t notice the shadow fly over me and by the time I reacted the creature was sitting on a low branch above the creek five feet away. It was the first memory I have of seeing an owl in the wild. It was by the far the largest bird I have ever seen in nature. She was all white, with bits of grey tufted here and there. She wasn’t moving and her eyes took me in. They were large and round and the color of dandelions. She might have had horns, and in some recollections earlier on I was more sure- before my brain started telling me what could or couldn’t be possible.

I held my breath as the owl turned its head around. For the moment that we sat there, the smell of the air seemed to shift, filling with a muskier scent of moldy earth and grated wood bark. I exhaled and the owl spread its wings out and flew silently, not even a whisper, back out over my head and I fell, watching it glide overhead, in fearful intimidation. I remember her wing span was almost as wide as I am tall. In that moment, I felt like I had glimpsed an unaltered state of the natural world. It woke something in me and my eyes were open, seeing the wild in tandem with the modern. For years I studied every kind of owl looking for the scientific name of the one I saw. None fit the initial description of what I saw.

One day I asked myself, if someone told me that the owl I saw was impossible in nature, would I disbelieve the experience? The answer was no. Even though I couldn’t find the correct scientific answer, my nose remembered its smell. My skin remembered the rush and blur of air as the owl swooped in. My eyes remember with artistic grandeur the unfurling of those wings. And my ears recall the kind of silence that accompanies the presence of a predator in nature. I chose to embrace the truth that my interaction with this magnificent creature woke a connection in me and served as the catalyst for the spiritual path I have taken. Knowing the facts and the science about that moment would not diminish the wonder and magic of the experience.

"The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious.

It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art

and true science. Whoever does not know it and can no longer wonder,

no longer marvel, is as good as dead, and his eyes are dimmed."

-Albert Einstein