Dying is hardwork

( just a preface, I am not actually dying, this is just a post concerning the spiritual ramifications and journey work I am undergoing as I transition fully into my genderqueer, non-binary self)

The spell bottle was a bust. I should have realized that trying to light a flame within a narrow neck bottle would prevent anything from burning since the passageway for oxygen to move into the base was way too small (no oxygen, no fire sprites, my friends). But the ritual was not a loss - it was one of those freakish failures that quickly turned into a scenario where the ecstatic side of my path took over. I suppose this is what happens when one of your gods is one of ecstatic madness - my body sorta just felt like it was on auto pilot once I realized the flame wasn't going to happen, and moved all efforts into focusing on burning the sigil I created and the herbs I  had chosen in my incense burner.

This is honestly one of the darkest rituals I have ever engaged in: one part spirit journey work, one part witchcraft, and one part that sort of felt like border line necromancy (nothing to do with actual dead bodies, just old ghost selves). The focus of the ritual quickly took form from originally being one of severance from an old self that was indecisive, weak, and refused to stand up for themselves, to an all out funeral pyre and bone collecting of sorts to set my spirit free.

Sometimes the work of witchcraft feels blood, dirty, and dark, but I realize now that is how it must be for a soldier just to carry on. I can no longer walk around, holding the old conception of myself like a bagged body I am denied from burying. I can't just keep shoving it in the closet and hoping that it won't bloat and rot and attract all the carrion birds that live in the back of my psyche.

So let's burn the witch (the old one) so their new body can rise.

I gave grape offerings to Dark Rabbit and Bapho, who helped me gather the bones and kept me rooted in the world tree (so the spirit wouldn't fly off while watching their body burn)

I drank and made libational offerings with detox tea (I don't actually believe this stuff cleanses your liver, I use the herbal mixture it has to demarcate the beginning of trance work).

Herbal Mixture to be burned alongside sigil:

• -bark shavings off of my pine wand (which has a strong tie to Baphomet)
• -hawthorne berries (for their connection with the world of Faery)
• -cedar, as an evergreen, it's smell is quite sweet while pungent, and I chose it because it carries images of rebirth for me when I bend down to sniff it :)

I moved the which and it's sigil to my incense burner which I lit while scattering the herbs on top of it. Some of the ashes are now inside my coffee tin drum as I used it to add an extra fire proofing container to the scenario. The drum is now going to be known as "bone blessed" since it ritualistically carried my ashes. 

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Day after the ritual:  (heavy with symbolism and imagery that only makes sense in the context of spirit journey work)

When I woke up this morning I felt like shit. When I went to carry the ashes of {dead name}  back into the house to pour into the bottle I originally was going to use for the old spell bottle ritual, I realized that their spirit has splintered like dried wood beneath the bow master's hand, to be thrown out and delivered to the fire time and time again, until each splinter releases it's confined spirit to the body which needs it purified, free from indecision, fearand spiritual decrepitude that follows from the dis empowerment of their own voice, keeping them from rising up to say 

I am not cisgender. I began as the line in the sand which water quickens to create a whole universe of tributaries that cut through dunes when the deluge comes. I am not just one line any more, but a river. 

But that doesn't mean there was not an old body left washed up, old bones which a ghost kid clings to and walked within as an empty shell in the past.  That doesn't mean they don't need a proper cleaning and a burial urn to keep until the day when the new body their spirit inhabits can finally say, that the little girl and the astral sailor are now one and the same, in the same house which can now float down south without fear of words shooting like flaming arrows down upon them, arrows fletched with :
"you are not real"  - a match which sets the heart's home ablaze.

I ended up writing quite a bit in depth about the actual happenings of the journey work I participated during this ritual, but I realize the details are really only pertinent to me, and probably should be kept private. 

But the biggest thing I have learned is that this burning of the past self is necessary to reify the will. As queer and witch, the will to self define & the will to work my intent is integral to emotional and spiritual fulfillment. Without will, my identity cannot walk free. Without the will, I cannot journey into the hedge to work towards freeing myself. 

Without will, I would not have been reborn as Ecco, to love myself just as much as I believe others should love themselves. 

Self definition is everything. Self definition is magical.

This ritual had two aims:

1. to give me a platform to disengage with {dead name}, the part of me trapped by fear of what sacrifices are necessary to be my queer, non binary self. 

2. to set the call to embrace the new body, as self defined by the queer, non binary self. 

This ritual was a demarcation of the threshold through which new life is possible, a life of truth with the spirits, the gods, and myself. A life in which I refuse to beat myself up with my old bag of bones and doubts.

Thank you for reading,

Ecco