A Love Letter to the Witch Who Has Lost Their Magick

a radical sabbatical post

If you choose to take up the art of magick
you have also chosen to lose it

even the most devilish and beautiful of witches 
lose their fierce
and forget the words to their most familiar spell

usually it’s in a time of great and monstrous undoing
when the unfairness of the world
uses your own heartbeat
to beat
you
down

and then magick seems to be a thing imagined
bourgeoisie and useless
small-minded and exorbitant
abandoning you
even after all your vows
spoken between the moon and midnight…

what remains is this

the ability to breath into your stillness
when electric wave upon wave demands your distraction

to know the name of leaf
and how the fire bends

and that a witch never dies
nor does their magick

my words to you,
my witch kin, 
tangled up in your fear that it’s really, truly gone
is to remember 

Magick is impermanent 
un-guaranteed
there and gone

but as the moon is always full
just hidden from our eye

you are always full
if impermanent in your perceptions

always whole

because magick
remembers
you

As I am currently off on sabbatical for three cycles of the Moon, this post was autoscheduled (you can find out more here). May these words have arrived with the magick of not quite knowing where it’ll land, but choosing to chance it anyways. Want to know when I get back? Sign-up for Magick Mail below.

I look forward to connecting with you all again upon my return.

This post was made possible through patron support.
❤︎ Thanks, friends. ❤︎

There Are Only Our Ancestors

There are only our ancestors
There are no others on the tree of life 
Only uncles and aunties and cousins and old folks
The ones we wish were at the table with us
And the ones who pushed us away from home

There are only our ancestors
No other ancestors but our own ancestors
Invaded the lands of our ancestors
Silenced the stories of our ancestors
And then our ancestors wrote those stories down in big books
(poorly and without all the good parts)
In words our ancestors couldn’t read

There are only our ancestors
And it has only ever been our ancestors
Who killed our ancestors
And our ancestors who smashed the temple stones
Of our ancestors
Who salted our fields
Who stole our children
Who escaped and returned home
Through the help of our ancestors

There are only our ancestors
Who taught us how to forgive
Only our ancestors who taught us how to hate
Who taught us when to look away
And when to stare our ancestors in the face
And see our ancestors looking back

There are only our ancestors
Who tore down the mangroves
And it was only our ancestors who replanted them
Only our ancestors who fought for us
To live and breathe in a world familiar and unknown

There are only our ancestors 
And there are only our descendants
No one else will fill up the hills but us
And we’ll only find our ancestors there
Because there is no other
There never has been, never will

There are only our ancestors

How strange for us to forget

How beautiful for us to remember

A Hag's Guide to Spring Cleaning

Scrub your skin with the dirt from a hollow hill.

Brush your body with raven feathers and the blessings of a million hags gone before who have never given a shit about the what looks “nice” to others.

Take all the pots and pans out of your kitchen, clean them with black salt, and bring them outside with your spoons and knives. Make a racket to wake up the earth and let the neighbors know that their local hag has woken up from winter slumber.

Water your garden with the tears shed by those suffering from fragile masculinity to help them grow towards their heart instead of their fear. 

Stitch up your worn out clothes with the red thread of intersectionality and luck.

Scare the life back into your heart by grinning so loudly in the mirror that you can see every tooth, fang, and monster song gurgling forth from the back of your throat.

Go to a crossroads, turn to the east, and spit three times so that you never forget how to find your way back.

Stain your lips and fingers with the blood of berries.

Braid thorns into your hair and rub rose dust into your eyebrows.

Never say you’re sorry for making it to another spring. Cackle instead and celebrate the ugly bits that have kept you alive.

Lace up your boots with the stories of your ancestors raging against powers they were told were unbreakable but have long turned to dust. 

Greet your witchen kin with right hands grasped, left hand over the heart of the other, foreheads touching. Breath in, breath out. Say, “I fucking love you.”

Remember that hags like you grow like weeds and springtime will never be the same. 

Create Your Own Poetry-Inspired Tarot Spreads

I like reading poetry, I like writing poetry, and I have memorized more than one poem as part of my devotional practice, dispensing them like blessings throughout my day. It is incredible how a simple collection of words, ordered in an uncanny or fantastically simple way, can spin open a heart whether written by someone last week or a thousand years ago. 

I think that Tarot is a poetic art and inspires us to get honey-tongued with our interpretations so that we might illuminate our depths and help others do the same. The ordering of words in the art of Tarot could be seen as the choice or creation of a spread. Many a tarot reader (and herbalist) will tell you that it is less about what cards are cast (or what healing imbalances are readily observable) and more about what questions are asked (and not asked). It can be difficult to determine what questions will be the most appropriate and revelatory, but feeling inspired to form a foundation on which to cast our cards can help us spark to life the right questions for us to be asking. The journey with Tarot (and our plant kin) asks us to expand the playing field of possibility and our ability to interpret our surroundings and inner landscape with inquisitiveness, courage, and confidence. The patch of scraggly trees on the corner of your block can become a sacred grove when our perception is rearranged and so it is with poetry that every day words take on new depths of vulnerability and consequence when they are arranged in ways to break us open, pull us together, and help us feel something that normally such words would not inspire for us.

If you haven't noticed yet at this point, I think the art of tarot and herbalism inform one another. Check out my free Tarot Herbal Wisdom series to learn more about the healing art of plant medicine and the power of casting cards.

So, clever one, if you're looking to stretch your card spread creating muscles and find new ways of discovering wisdom-rich questions, I've created the following poetry-inspired activity for you!

First, gather your deck of choice (it can be a Tarot or Oracle deck or similar divinatory tool that you can use with spreads), a pen, piece of paper, and a poem of choice. 

As an example, I've chosen the following short poem from the collection of the Zi Ye (or Songs of Ziye) which are poems and Chinese folk songs typically said to be written by women from the 6th - 3rd centuries BCE.

All night I could not sleep
because of the moonlight on my bed.
I kept on hearing a voice calling:
Out of Nowhere, Nothing answered "yes."

It's an intriguing poem, describing restlessness and yearning but great possibility. Who hasn't felt spiritually restless on their journey, staring into the dark and yearning for answers? So let's translate the wisdomspark of the poem into a Tarot spread.

There are a number of ways to create a poem-inspired spread. If the poem is short enough and it makes sense to do so, you can make every line of the poem a different card position. So I could create a spread asking the following four questions:

• A description of my current state of  spiritual restlessness. This first card acts like a mirror helping the querent understand what they are experiencing.
• The source of my spiritual restlessness. Just as the moonlight in the poem distracts them from sleep, we can find our own source of spiritual distraction.
• What messages are trying to get through that I am ignoring and/or confused by. In the poem there is a voice calling out from the great vastness of Nowhere and it is named as Nothing. What is calling out to the querent? Alternatively, you could ask What is preventing me from listening to my inner wisdom and/or the wisdom of my guides, God/dess/es, ancestors, etc?
• The card of possibilities. The impossibility of Nowhere becoming Nothing and saying "Yes" is the power of this poem so it feels appropriate to cast one card that allows for possibility and unexpectedness.

That is just one way of interpreting the Zi Ye poem into a spread. If you've chosen a much longer poem where a line-by-line spread would prove cumbersome, you can still identify the overarching themes of the poem. Certain words or lines may stand out to you more than others - follow those to the questions you might ask. The following is a longer poem by Hadewijch II, an unidentified 13th century Christian  female mystic (side note: my little witch-heart fell deeply in love with the writings of female Christian mystics in junior high school and I consider Hildegard von Bingen to a vastly important but too often unrecognized source of wisdom in the Traditional Western Herbalism lineage - let's change that).

All things
are too small
to hold me,
I am so vast

In the Infinite
I reach
for the Uncreated

I have
touched it,
it undoes me
wider than wide

Everything else
is too narrow

You know this well,
you who are also there

Her words make me think of an energetic combination of the Hanged One and Tower cards in the Major Arcana of the Tarot.  For me, she describes something coming undone, chaotic but utterly still. 

Cards from the World Spirit Tarot

There are a couple of themes that stand out to me in Hadewijch II's poem. First, the idea of growing out of your current situation and life choices so far. Then there is the effort of reaching for something that has not yet come into being but it is still having an effect. Finally, there is an undoing of loneliness as Hadewijch II identifies with you or her community or her God as being on the journey as well. Four (maybe five) cards might be cast then, with the following inquiries:

• What have I grown out of? or What is coming undone?
• What am I reaching for that is still coming into being?
  • Another card you might pull at this point could be: How is what is still coming into being affecting me now?
• hat restricts me from reaching and needs to be released?
• Who is on this journey with me? or A message from my inner wisdom, guides, God/dess, ancestors, etc. The last question depends on your spiritual framework or the note you want to end the spread on. You might be seeking solidarity with what is coming into being and want to know who is along with the ride.

Ok, ready to work with your own poem? Read through your chosen poem a few times, jotting down themes and reflections that come up for you. It may take a few rounds for the questions to emerge. Just write down whatever comes up for you - flow is better than restriction at this point. Once you feel like you've gathered enough themes from the poem, begin to transform those themes into questions. So, if longing is a theme of your poem you might ask "What am I longing for?" Arrange the questions into a spread and cast your cards. You might find that in your first casting that you find more nuance in the questions or even the ordering what is asked - the cards can be very helpful in letting us know that if there were to be cast just a little differently - and therefore opening up more space - that more insight might emerge. Play, be poetic, and experiment, clever ones!

I hope that you are inspired to play with your own spread-skills having read through how I create poetry-inspired Tarot spreads. If you do end up creating a poetry-inspired tarot spread be sure to share your experiences and links in the comments. You can also use the #PoetryInspiredTarot to share your creations via social media (I hang out on instagram most often). Most of all, enjoy the process and happy spread creating!

A million easy steps to a more magickal life...

Begin (again).

Re-member and dream anew.

Shift towards the sacred.

Set your head on fire. 

Follow your desire.

Forget.

Re-member.

Fight with teeth bared.

Love with hands open.

Speak the name of your Beloveds.

Hear your name being spoken.

Forget.

Re-member.

Avoid your shadow if you don't want to discover anything.

Pay attention to the moon, stretch towards sun.

Count every star that has ever wished on you.

Forget.

Re-member.

Get really, really scared.

Come undone.

Get really, really brave.

Come undone.

Forget.

Re-member.

Practice your art with every intake of breath.

Gift your art with every outbreathing.

Forget.

Re-member.

Take another step.

Begin (again).