A long awaited return
It’s been 6 months since I launched my website, 8 since the idea was first brought to life. In the beginning, I was swimming with ideas, bubbling with inspiration, and found motivation at every turn. It’s been 6 months since I have done anything substantial with this foundation I’ve built. Things changed. And they’re changing again. I’d like to think this moment is a burgeoning, a phoenix moment. It may or may not be coincidence- writing this post on a glorious November afternoon: perhaps it’s the sun shining, perhaps it is the virtues and values of hygge and inguz I’ve imbued into my space, perhaps it’s the sounds of Americans and the world celebrating as the reign of terror brought about by the Trump Administration is officially ending. Perhaps it’s coincidentally all of the above. I don’t believe in coincidence and this day was absolutely a break in the chain.
I don’t want to belabor the woes of the last several months to center myself and my experiences as any sort of parade of exceptionalism or glorification of anguish. I have reasons and they are valid. I do want to talk about them especially in relation to magick because, mayhap someone, somewhere will see these words and feel not so alone.
In May, as I was launching Feral Magick and had every intention of putting the pedal to the metal, a very real housing insecurity became priority number one. So many are still facing housing insecurities brought on by the pandemic and the devaluing of human welfare which is part and parcel to capitalism. I spent so much of my private and magickal time focusing on easing the woes of housing insecurities for myself and others as I could. (Spells and rituals at the end)
In November of 2019, the ceiling in my apartment started to cave in from a massive rain and I packed up in a hurry to move in with my partner as we pursued the necessary steps for purchasing a home, only to be denied approval because I work for myself and tax documents made me a risk to mortgage lenders. My partner and I saved everything we could, and March of 2020 we were finally approved...one week before everything shut down because of the pandemic. Atop this, we were give a move out deadline that started as an April 30th projected date, which was moved to the end of May, then June, and then finally a July 17 eviction deadline. My partner lived and worked in a building housing mission interns for Christian faith based nonprofits and the director of this organization had no real understanding of the pandemic nor any real notion of the uncharitable, cruel pressure she caused with this eviction deadline during a global health crisis.
My things were in boxes. I had to hobble together a home office as so many did. I was the sole income for our household. And being self-employed, the banks could have denied us at any point in the home buying process. Every day I had to validate my income and prove I was working. Every day I had to file more and more and more paperwork. I had to buckle down and split my days between viewing homes as safely as possible and working. Working in the spiritual community during a time when the cosmos was blaring TOWER TIME in every direction made work a marathon, never a chore but an endurance game to be sure.
I know my experience is not unique. I also know I am so lucky. With a heavy heart, I know I am lucky.
I soon found that a single Instagram post took roughly 3 hours to craft. Words started to blend together, letters started to lose their sounds, numbers were scrambled. My anxiety and fear of contact from other people skyrocketed, as so many experienced and are still experiencing. A crippling fear of death made it hard for me to drive. I stopped getting dressed. I stopped bathing. I wanted to scream and yell and hit things, but words could not be found and the thought of letting go and truly feeling those things would shred the last semblance of normalcy I had. Every ounce of my being was dedicated to surviving. It had been so until late September. Things slowly came back to center.
In all this my magic was gone. I tried to connect to the elements, but I was too afraid to venture too far from home. I kept with the tarot, but I had to compartmentalize it as work...since it is my day job. I tried to light candles and whisper petitions, but then an art piece I kept on my altar caught fire as a big gut punch to feeling any power at all. Journeys were so difficult, and even though I could feel the beings, spirits, and deities I work with, I had no words. My tools and familiar objects were in boxes, packed away for months as life shifted around me.
I felt so lost. I felt empty. I felt worn and ragged and ashamed of the tatters, longing for the me I once was and the magick I once had.
So, I write this to say it’s ok. I write this to say your magick is your will. I write this to say that in the darkness, a single light is immeasurably bright. If you’ve happened upon a time in your life where things are a mess and magick is replaced with a void or terrifying static, I see you. I feel you. Things may not be ok, you may not be ok and that is valid. But, if you are lost you can also be found. And you can do the finding.
And that brings me to the magick.
Light and Love is erasure. Light and Love alone gets us nowhere. We must exist in union between light and shadow on the axis between ego and Self. Let us normalize being lost AND being found.
I bought Pema Chodron’s Fail, Fail Again, Fail Better wherein a quote stirred something inside me.
“And here is the advice Trungpa Rinpoche gave me. He said “Well, it’s a lot like walking into the ocean, and a big wave comes and knocks you over. And you find yourself lying on the bottom with sand in your nose and in your mouth. And you are lying there, and you have a choice. You can either lie there, or you can stand up and start to keep walking out of the sea.” (79)
Start to keep walking.
Starting to keep walking means there will be more waves, and they will barrel toward you. They may knock you down again. You may hit the sand again, you may hit a low again. But you chose to stand and start walking once. You can do it again.
This to me is less a message of will power, of mustering strength when there seems to be none left. Let’s be real: that’s hard as fuck. It’s brutal going when you're so low. This is not a message of wanton optimism. This is a message of agency. It’s going to suck. It’s going to royally suck. And you didn’t choose the wave that hit, do not carry any blame or guilt for this. But you can choose. And when you fall again, as you will, you can choose then, too.
What is magick if not putting energy to will? We set intentions and we act. By ceremony, petition, or hopeful wishing we send those intentions out. By listening to self, signs, and going forth we act. Magick doesn’t end the minute your candle is snuffed or your circle closed. You carry it with you in your heart into the world. Magick is living intentionally to create healing and change.
I sought the counsel of my long time friend and mentor, V of Red Light Readings. She is a wonder, a truly gifted soul. I’m doing her ‘Mentor-ita’ program and the insights are profound. She had me name my fears, name my bondage, name myself. Right now, we’re working on wants and giving breath to the frivolous and whimsical, something I often repress for utilitarian needs, pragmatism, and projections of scarcity. I have a WANT journal now. I chose it very carefully. The cover has added another layer to being lost and being found.
The cover reads: “Finding yourself” is not really how it works. You aren’t a ten-dollar bill in last winter’s coat pocket. You are also not lost. Your true self is right there, buried under cultural conditioning, other people’s opinions, and inaccurate conclusions you drew as kid that became your beliefs about who you are. “Finding yourself” is actually returning to yourself. An unlearning, an excavation, a remembering who you were before the world got its hands on you.
(I will try to figure out how to upload images into the blog format, eek!)
I think there’s not a soul on earth that doesn’t feel distant from who they were before this world got its hands on them, not now.
There are a lot of magickal practitioners who speak to the Great Remembering. I am one of them. Read any of my Instagram posts and you’ll find I try to connect everything, every little mundane thing in my life to remembering. Be it ancestor veneration, looking to recipes for insight into old medicines, superstitions as omens of olde, connecting to nature to honor the nature within…
We have choices. We can find the calm in the storm. We can be the calm. We can be the storm. We can also be the wave that crashes down upon ourselves. We can also be Pippi Longstocking singing “I am the sea and nobody owns me.”
Now, this is not victim blaming. At all. Ever. A part of this work demands we look inwards. Shadow work demands we examine the manifestation and perpetuations of ills taught to us. If we are inadvertently crashing down waves upon ourselves, know it, say it, own it, put it down.
But, how?
Anyway, really. You get to choose.
That might seem like a lot of pressure. It can be. When I was searching for a way out, I kept picking up books looking for inspiration, looking for the cure to getting my magick back. Nothing hit. So, instead of looking outward on where and what to choose, go inward. Listen inward. Name one wave, one tree in the forest. What is it standing in the way of, between you and your scared what? You remember when you felt that sacred what? What did it feel like? You want it back? Name what you want. Name one want. Choose one thing to get you closer to that want. For me, it was just naming them. Giving them space to breathe because Jesus Marie Christ, I couldn’t breathe myself.
Now, turn to your sacred things- the tools, candles, athames, chalices, daggers, sacred twigs, offerings- and go through the motions. Light a candle. No, it won’t feel like the old times or the Before Times pre-Covid, but it’s something. And you chose it.
Next, turn to the things you do every day. That morning cup of coffee? It can be a part of this too. That want you have? It’s an intention now, a petition, a hopeful wish.
Writing this is an act of choice and magick for me. It’s taken me three hours to do it, but that’s the same time it used to take me to write a short Instagram post. I half-assed a manifestation candle from Pagan Potions and just kinda lit it...wrote magick on the side doodled what I thought was a silly sigil and said, “yeah, okey dokey magick let’s go.” I lit it maybe three days ago for the first time.
I lit today when I sat down to start this project. It had a good four inches on it, what was a 3x5 candle. I just turned around and… the thumbnail image of this post is the candle now (still working on imbedding images into the post). You gotta take my word, that candle was solid and 4 inches tall, 3 inches around 3 hours ago.
Magick is real. It’s inside you. It never left. If you are lost, choose the kind of found you want to be.
A spell for blessing the land, A spell for housing security
You will need:
A bowl
Milk (of any kind including nut, oat, coconut, rice, etc.) or Water
Honey (or any flower, flower nectar, especially if it’s a native flower to your area)
What to do:
Mix milk and honey in a bowl
Go outside, or nearest to outside as safety dictates
Ask from your heart the blessing of the land spirits, ask the blessing of the earth and the roots of trees to grant you stability or safe and serene passage to stable housing
If you are outside, use your fingers to sprinkle the milk and honey as offering to the land and land spirits. If you are inside, place a small intentional drop with your finger at the place closest to outside
Walk the perimeter of where you are, inside or out- if you are looking to leave, thank the land, acknowledge it is time to go in peace and place a drop in each cardinal corner of your home. If you are looking to stay, thank the land and with gratitude ask for peace and comfort to take the place of strife
Stand at the door or entryway and make one big, long smear of the milk and honey on the door jam or wall partition, state your dedication to being a good steward of the land that no harm shall enter, or that as you leave no harm shall follow
Research the native peoples of the land you’re on, make a donation if you have the means or educate yourself on the history of those peoples
Get wyrd. Stay wyrd. Believe in magick.
-DeAnnah
Feral Magick