Omnia's "Reflections"

Omnia and I have a screwed up relationship. On one hand we love their soul splitting, psyche altering, blood raising compositions that bring the spirit right out of us and at times cause us to cross the hedge immediately with just a few verses. On the other hand, I really cringe at that fact, now that I am a little more conscious of social justice issues, that their presentation and music at times is so culturally misappropriative that I can imagine the ancestors of these cultures whose music they are imitating laughing at their attempts to mimic their sacred songs. 

Also, the lead guy  Steve has said some really problematic things in regards to other pagan music groups that really smack of egotistical tirades of a white dude trying to prove he's more "authentically" wild and rustic than the rest of them. So even though I saw them live four years ago and the experience blew my mind and conjured the ghost right out of me, I still feel the need to call it like I see it when I talk about them in real life.

This new album almost made me throw the whole band out with the bath water when I realized it was essentially remixes and reworkings of songs from across their discography. But, I didn't want to knock it until I tried it. So I put it on my car stereo last night and found my expectations wonderfully proven wrong. 

The whole album is like one wonderful cosmic trip across soundscapes. Many of the tracks will make great hedgecrossing background noise when trying to block out the sounds of the house. I'm not saying this makes anything about this band less problematic, but they do make some really lovely music when they play the tracks that get back to their more innocent, less imperializing roots. 

You can listen to the whole album here.

Plurality and The Witch.

Life's gotta a funny way of making so many twist and turns out of you that you find your body and soul tunneled in  and out for the passage of snake friends you didn't even know you had. You're an oubourous that forgot it was suppose to be eternal so it made you into holy cheese instead of one pretty little circle. But circles are for sun, moon, and time. Mortals get to have all of the fun. We get elliptical that pause, jump, ricochet off course and fall out of gravity's pull all together.


But like a flashlight that has to be smacked so it turns back on, we never the less eventually find ourselves peering into the darkness to find that someone, somewhere in that big black mess of a soul that Ge gave up from herself when we came screaming out of the birth canal, a voice comes whispering. Usually its some sort of wise old saying from experiences in the history of the world that we've forgotten somewhere along the ride between Hel and back. But other times, its SOMEONE else, a Other you didn't know had hitched along for the ride, an eye peering through the hole the ourbourous with AD/HD and skittles bored through you.

And it's Epiphany and truth come out with a snarl, "Boy, what the fuck do you think you're doing?"

And with a single sentence, just when you think you had it all figured out, that you had swore up and down the gods had asked you to give up the Craft and sit down to have a nice little life of prayer and devotion that looks like something out of a god damn manual for greek piety, you realize you made a decision that wasn't yours to make really. Yeah, that's right baby, you tried to leave the Witch, but the Witch will never leave you.

And who do we have to thank for this cosmic smack in the head? Well, as  one of the Others, giggle inside of me, I find out I have to confess a little thing that feels like its probably the nuttiest thing my little soul ever felt. Too many acorns and not enough places to put them in the earth, so out comes this truth that cannot be hidden anymore.

I am plural - that is to say, I'm not just ecco. There is a WE in here. And one of the Others pulled my hair and boxed my ears, in her loving way that was ever so slow, but eventually became an itch I couldn't ignore, reminding me that all this - all this kowtowing to the gods and believing that's all that would ever be asked of me - was for the birds. The gods don't need me as I certainly need them. But it's pure ass lazy child to expect that your destiny ends in a pretty white robe smelling of frankincense and eternal divine peace. 

You're a dirt loving, hedge crossing, spirit worker. You're a child of an queer threesome between Sun and Moon and Stars. Earth didn't make you just so you could sigh at the beauty of her Children the Olympians. Get with the program, silly ecco. The Witch never dies. 

So.. can I say it now? I've been dying to this whole post.


The Witch is back.

Hecate and The Witchling

Its funny  - I look at my publication history on this blog and I realize that I go through cycles - intense spiritual connection and demarcations followed by periods of rampant depression and dysphoria. In no way, shape, or form am I implying that magic, ritual, and hedgecrossing (also known as journey work, i.e. travelling in spirit to other realms) is a remedy or treatment for mental illness, in fact I may be implying the exact opposite. Its possible to aggravate a mood disorder by knocking on the wrong doors so to speak. I definitely have found myself in episodes of anxiety when I've latched out or let another entity enter my space when I didn't have the right wards and protections in place. But sometimes things have to get emotionally violent before real change is made, before we cut away those things that seek to drag us under the rip tide. Major spiritual work is dirty and deadly. Not necessarily to you, but to parts of you that no longer serve the direction your work is taking you.

Years ago when I first came to practice witchcraft in earnest I instantly felt myself drawn to Hecate, the titan goddess associated with the moon, with the crossroads, descents into the Underworld, and the sea. As most baby witches do, I found her in the materials more easily accessible to me list her as a "crone" and "dark mother." When I began to understand that this was a gross skewing of her identity - she is a virgin (asexual, as I have come to understand through UPG) as well as the most powerful and respected god of her generation. Hecate's great insight and sight into mirror of wyrd saw that the monstrous tyrants of her family falling and making way for the the dominion of a new dynasty. As this goddess of the ways knows, everything shifts, every road must lead to a new world, a new space, and even the earth, as permanent as its power may have seemed then, was no different.

In those developmental phases of my path I honored her regularly, and I can't remember ever consciously deciding to back away from working with her, but I can recall that one night when I invoked her, her presence was so immediate and strong that it moved the table of my altar a fraction of an inch. She seemed to be busting through the door, as if to say, "I'm here, now lets get to work." But I was no way ready, so I feel back into the arms of Artemis, wrapping the cloak of her sacred woods around me like a visor over a baby's carriage. Instinctively my spirit seemed to know this goddess was not "beginner's material" for this witchling.  So I merely made offerings to her as was her due at the time, recognizing her as the nexus of magic and journey work, the great needle in the cosmic compass through which the craft flows as it makes it's way towards its destination.

But this past year I have ritually performed the death of my old self while entering the cyclic states of depression fueled by dysphoria. It was as though I had to be emptied in order for the direction of my path to be made clear, to come into focus as the black smoke which filled my veins spooled out of me and back into the abyss. I'm not one for predestination or destiny, but I do believe in Wyrd - how the stirrings of the past bloom into the present and often times the gods and the spirits play vital part in the unfurling of the mortal world. Looking back on these events and how my general passion over the past few years has been journeying to other realms by hedgecrossing, its hard not to wonder if that knock at the door of that ritual several years ago was Hecate's first move towards asking me to be witch under her. Not a servant really - I in no way claim to be a priest - but rather a spirit worker who walks along side her and uses his energy to make changes in the below and within, in order to manifest changes above (here) and without. Perhaps I'm being too pompous about it all, but this feels as though this is the calling, the sacred space where I belong - staff in hand, following our Lady of The Crossroads under the dome of her holy night.

Tonight, I opened the door again and passed through to meet her. I lit the candle within my compass of slate which is tied directly into the Other and fell out of my body and down the through the earth. For days the image of a door banging open and shut, as though someone had just passed through it and it bounced against wood of the door frame, has been reoccuring. When this happens I have learned to recognize the repetition as a a call, a knock on my astral body. "Come," the titan goddess says. And so I pushed the door open again and found my sight confounded by a brilliant but stark white which surrounded me. For several seconds I was completely blinded until around me harsh, bold lines stood out which resolved themselves into shapes of a forest. No color, no detail, simply these errant lines. It seemed as though the entire world was blanketed in the white snow of death.

Ahead of me I recognized Hecate, bearing her two torches. Unlike the forest, she was fully defined and brilliantly lit by an aura of smoky blackness, which made her stick out vibrantly against the coat of white which smothered the world around her. Her dogs sniffed at the road beneath our feet. Searching, hunting. Eventually we passed the only hint of color to be found - a crystalline blue which seemed to move like water beneath the icy white of the forest floor. She snapped her fingers and the dogs created a circle, a watch, as they sat and kept guard against the faint spirals of energy, of wavering lines which seemed to be closing the distance between the forest and where the river of blue began. She  pushed her torches into the ground, one in the north and the other in the south, and began to raise her hands. The crystalline blue water broke through the icy white of the ground and rose all around us, a sea rising just beyond where the dogs stood as points of the circle . We were shielded and as I felt my astral body connecting to the energies of my own protective spirits, gods, and fae, Hecate began to use her knife to cut open the white blanketed earth at our feet. She peeled it pack as though she was peeling back cut flesh and beneath the white she revealed dark soil, crimson, bleeding with roots of brilliant red. She continued to dig when she dusted away the dirt to reveal Dark Rabbit - a local cthonic spirit, curled up as though cold, shuddering as though dreaming. She nodded towards me and I reached down to touch Dark Rabbit when I realized my hands had found a hollow in her belly. I reached in and found a latch, or at least it felt like one, and when I flipped it, Dark Rabbit's eyes flew open and she seemed to coalesce, reforming into the body of a dark haired woman with soft floopy ears similar to those of her animal body. Red veins, like those of the earth which had cacooned and nursed her, trailed beneath her white skin. The blood was pulsing within her.

"Now you," Hecate said, and with little thought I seemed to understand what she was bidding me to do. I closed my eyes and saw a diamond like shape surrounding my own home and within it, the blood of the earth fueled my sacred fires, my hearth, my very life. But the white of this world of death was closing in. I had to set my own wards. So I empowered the diamond, mobilized it to become concrete and immovable and from there I reached out and touched the ruby of Dark Rabbit's heart.I felt fire seal the diamond, form it from the very flames of the deep.  When I opened my eyes again, I looked up and saw the walls of water beginning to collapse, Hecate was feeding her dogs whole pieces of flesh she drew out of the earth.

"Go now." Above the dwindling heights of the waves I saw spiraling forms of black and white crawling down from the trees. I recognized them instantly - somehow, I don't know exactly when or where, I have met them before. They are the bottom feeders of the world beneath ours. They suck in what is falling apart and pour it into the meaty mass of the earth's astral form. But I had to leave now to avoid tripping their safe guards against the mortal from entering their world.

A great tree of myriad colors sprung up from the earth and a door at it's base opened. I crawled inside, running down the long tunnel until I saw the back of my head, my body sitting crosslegged on the floor.

I was back. My physical head now spinning and swarming with all that I had experienced, I realized what Hecate had led me to do on this journey. We were laying the wards, setting the foundation for new connections, new paths between myself and the Other, the Wild, the Beyond.

It all sounds so crazy but I realize now I'm entering the mature phase of my path. The way is open, my athame stands ready and my wand is arcing towards the stars. I just had to be brave enough, free enough, to actually open the door fully. No more with this one foot here the other foot sorta floating on the air in the Other. Its now planted, making roots, feeling the ground. Energy flows within and wanes as it moves out. My body is a circle, my life is a cycle. But I finally feel as though the cycles of crises have successfully dynamited open my way forward.

Hecate's torches light the way. Witchling just has to open his damn eyes.

Amber Honey, Faery Queen of Southern Summers & Queer Initiation for Lughnasa

For years I've been going through my hedgecrossing life without documenting very much of it. Poetry for the most part has been the most effective way I feel to capture that ineffable, ever shifting quality I experience when I'm in the world of Faery, but it's definitely not the best way to communicate to others on what I've found there.  And for the most part, what I see and do there are not necessarily of use to anyone else. The nature of Faery is something that is eternal yet the shape of things there are the very lesson of impermanence. Plus, the fae folk's reputation of playing tricks and being downright shoddy to mortals with their games of smoke and mirrors doesn't help in this matter. What you may have seen or been told by a faery being could be enigmatic at best or a downright lie at the worst.

And although it may sound like a magical rollercoaster of wonder and terror, I definitely feel that it's not too different from the human realm. We are constantly on a day to day basis changing the stakes and the definitions of our world through arbitrary laws and measures that are just as transformative and altering as magic. Our language encodes the perceived universe around us to such a degree that we often don't really see the "objective" world as it is anymore. Take for instance our binary gender structures. By calling a person with a vagina a "female" I have already slotted her, even by the so called scientific definition, into a world that is way beyond the mere image of human being who has a vagina. "Female" draws up connotations of birth, mother, breasts, food, weak - even before we get into the social construction of "Woman" the word "female" has already alluded to it - conjured it even, if I might be so bold.

With that thought in mind, it's easy to see that we really are not that different from the world of Faery, with the exception of that at least in the world of Faery, we are aware that change is the only constant, where as in the world of humans we try everything we can to keep up the appearances of law and order.

As I was bathing tonight, hoping to soak in that new moon energy and let go of all of this torturous anger and rage that has been bottling up out of my dysphoria as of late, I realized that I had conjured up a door way to an entity I had met previously in passing - the Fae Queen of Summer. Before she had appeared to me as the blood stained wife of the Fae King whose ashes and parchment seeded the Queer Fae Kin I spoke of in my previous post. This time, as I let myself simmer in a hot bath filled with dead sea salt treated with argan, rose, and black opium oil, I found myself sailing away down the river into a domain in which she truly ruled, and was not simply passing by.

Here, I was led up into a pine cone shaped wooden zephyr which billowed in the air, creaking as the breeze moved it, with pennants flying about in a rainbow of colors. Kou, the fae kin of Earth, with his sword in hand, led me up a flight of bottomless stairs which ran all the way around the zephyr, leading in a spiral to its height.  The night hung black and profound around us, as though its potential was liable to burst into starry radiance at any moment.  What happened next is a jumble, a series of impressions rather than any one experience which can adequately be pinned down. But I witnessed the Fae Queen sit before me and when she spread her arms out the earth rumbled and the air was filled with a sickening sweetness. Below us, the plates of the crust merged and subdued, creating new land, new scapes, and with but a gesture, her indigo skin began to glow as she bristled and hummed like a fluttering humming bird. The very same birds flew around her in a vignette. They drew nectar from her hair as she sang her animal song.

Kou's sword shone blue in the night and when he swung it to cut down vine and flowering branches for the queen, it made the sound  of feathers flapping in flight.

In order to honor this Faery Queen who walks in South Eastern Tennessee this time of year, I have compiled a few notes about her that I gleaned from this hedgecrossing.

• Her name came to me as I fell back into my body near the end of the trance: Amber Honey. The image of Artemis of Ephesus comes to mind when picturing her. 
  

• She prominently wears a violet third eye. Her flower is the lilac and hibiscus. 

•  I think of her as mother, but more of the word mother at it applies when describing vinegar's mother batch. She is more concerned with gathering the fruit and spreading it. She does not focus on motherly care or parental sort of actions. But rather, she is the great egg which bursts and fertilizes all which it yoke splashes on. Honey gushing from the comb, fruit bursting with over ripeness are her images. 

• To evoke and conjure: black opium, dead sea salt mixed with argan oil, rose oil. All of this is compounded during the new moon. The absent moon is her face. She comes to cover us in the night with her rapturous orgiastic culling of the vine.

• Iconography: travels in a pine cone shaped zephyr, She is black skinned woman with red hair wrapped in a braid about her head. She has star colored freckles and from her mouth runs the blood of the wolf's first kill. Or is it the the raspberry gone to bust? 

• Her husband was a human who was transformed into a fae being. He was only concerned with the ruling of the earth by edicts and decrees She let him be winnowed by the great winds to help birth the Queer Fae Kin.  I am her child - a seed that fell into fertile soil during her reign. 

• During the evening her skin turns indigo and glows with the pale fire of Polaris in spiral designs of the universe. 

• The excess pits and seeds she gathers she takes to  the deep in her great zephyr and there she tosses flowers and fruits into the black sea. The sea swallows her offering, and a tender hand reaches up. Summer and Ocean kiss. And then they are parted for another year. 

With Lughnasa coming up, I think I am going to take this time to think of initiation rituals as an enby witch with Queen Amber as my initiatory deity. Without her I would have never have met the Fae kin who have become so much a part of my everyday magical experience and her very presence seems to be the essence of chaotic creation in motion. And what is more queer than that?

Living liminal

At my place of employment there are these slanted Mirrors which run along the length of the building allowing you to monitor customers as they shop. It's intended to discourage and deter nare-do-wells from shoplifting. But one day last week the humidity and my erratic energy patterns(caffeine problems) came to a head on one of our typical Tennessee stormy summer nights, and so when I looked into the mirror for a split second hoping to catch my breath, it seemed as though I was looking into the reflection of an entirely different place. There were no magical kingdoms or unicorns in that reflection, nothing to simply justify my description of this "liminal experience". It simply it seemed as though the "real world" that the mirror was portraying was simply a gauze over a flickering light which illuminated our motions at a flame's whimsy. It was like watching moth wings beat inside of a lamp hood. Our movements seemed ephemeral and fragile and I felt that if I could reach out and touch that world inside the mirror, then I could pull of the skin of that world, like wings off a moth, and find the real body, my body, falling straighten into the gravity of that world. 

These sort of moments are common in my magical workings, but it was strange, and yet exhilarating to find this sort of calm and uncanny mixture of the "between" and the mundane nestled right where I perform the most menial, uninteresting of tasks in my day to day life. Here, on the grounds where I simply rinse and repeat in the great washing machine that is my retail working retinue, I found that our own bodies are still fluttering, still beating with that riotous chaos which gives us life, even though the patina of commercialism and consumer driven desire usually snuffs it out to a dim ember, so that all I usually feel and see are the down cast eyes of the man who just wants a pack of cigarettes and little else, not even a smile and a greeting which, when offered, he barely even acknowledges. Yet in the mirror, he was glowing, effervescent, a wisp of a light which, when snuffed out, gets swallowed by the larger light of the looming atmosphere.  

In the office it's not uncommon to hear the pipes banging against the lockers, which creates the illusion that someone is opening and slamming a locker door.  Once or twice it set me off guard, but after it's regular occurrence I realized it was the result of document-able and explainable phenomenon.  But just the other evening, I saw movement out of the corner of my eyes, and as usual, I shrugged it off as one of my coworker's heading back to their locker. When I went to grab some lotion out of my own just a few seconds later, no one was there.  My heart skipped a beat, my breath grew heavy, and I could only whisper, "I see ya'll are following me." 

I've traversed through these paragraphs to come full circle to the idea of the liminal and what walking the path of the witch really means outside of the mystery and mysticism of the circle. Our lives are not cleanly cut, the circle is always within other circles, touching and intersecting like ripples across the sea during the rain. My own path of fae hedge crossing work proves time and time again that you cannot simply take off the "hat" so to speak and expect only magical and transformative events to occur within our demarcations of "magic time."  Time and time again, it seems as though our magical systems and beliefs fall apart when we end up falling just a little too far over the line into the world of fae. 

I suppose that that is what grounding is for. Too often I find my spirit and energies easily uprooted by the call of the those across the hedge, so please take warning. Effective magical work needs be done with a foot firmly planted in this world and the next, but it's rather refreshing to be proven wrong about a closely held belief. Like the time when I called to the fae for the first time, expecting Lady of the Lake like women to meet me in trance, when what I get is an old drunken man asking if I've seen his moon shine bottle and if I could leave out some milk and honey for his twin daughters who have gone off again.  Or the time when that summer queen showed up all dressed in peacock feathers, convincing me that she was Hera, only to open up her mouth and show off her set of bloody pointed teeth.

If you go in with expectations, which is only natural, be prepared to have them smashed. In my history of walking the path of the hedgewich, I have found that just when you think that all you are doing is making an offering out of rue water, you consequentially end up offering a spell of protection over some baby entities who have come into your life out of the blue.  

Liminal in one sense means having a dual existence, but it can also prove to show that all of our actions have the two faces of a coin as well. Intention and will are all fine and good, and without them we wouldn't be witches, now would we? But once the fae step in, they often take what we offer and pour out and configure it in new ways. It's as though our moments across the hedge are not just about linear actions, but about stitches in an unravelling tapestry that is quickly and eternally being rewoven into the present. 

The essence of faery is the essence of change. Part of this relationship I have built with my magic and the hedge has shown me that in order to participate in such changes is to stand still, let it catch you up in it, and go along for the ride. I suppose that is contradiction, we must be still to move into the change that sweeps us up into the destructive, yet  re-birthing power of the worlds between worlds.  Yet also you cannot rest at anyone time on one perception of the universe. It's as though you have drawn a card. The first time you glance down at it, it's a spade. But the second time, it's suddenly an ace. It is the exact same card but you have drawn it in a multiplicity of instances resembling this exact moment, and yet it is never the same. Just like when you walk into the same valley in trance, the exact same one you found to be the home of a river sprite, and yet now, you meet a tree named Gall and he has no idea who you are talking about and has never met her. They both exist, but the time and ripples have  washed over each other, changing the landscape, without erasing your own experience. 

And so today, when I go into work later on, I might look into that very same mirror and see only the bland faces of singleminded shoppers who either look to get lost in our treasure trove of cosmetics and candy or hope to find the holy grail of a deal they think they are getting with that misread coupon. But that gauze of light, that rippling sinew of energy that resides is still there, thrumming, waiting to be touched. I just haven't stepped on the right patch of grass over the hedge to see it. Maybe the sky is too dark, or my muscles to tired, or my mood to sour. But it is there all the same.  

Close your eyes. Inhale, cross the hedge, exhale. What you find is anyone's guess, but it will never be the same card once. 

Faery Dreams - on trance work while dealing with mental illness

Night comes draping around me like a familiar blanket, one that often life has withheld from me during my periods of deep depression. Then, sleep was merely an escape, a total black out from consciousness, a temporary freedom from the hell of my own body and it's errant and self deprecating reality. It was like crawling into bed was falling into a noose that I hoped would never let off of it's grip.

But finally, with the help of my psychiatrist and some good old fashioned caffeine, and video game therapy which allows me to displace some of my gender dysphoria (until a time to deal with it when I mentally have enough strength to process and filter it properly), I seem to have found the alchemical compound that transfigures the nightmare of  the human world into a bearable case of ennui and so sleep comes as a sweet lover kissing my eyelids rather than as a despairing mother drowning their child in the hopes of sparing him the terribleness of it all.

It's taken a few months but with the chemical cocktail now in my system  as well as my latent fears  subsiding for the time being, I can look at my bed and no longer sees a coffin. Instead Hypnos reaches out too me, whispering to me of lands beyond the sandman's dunes.  Images began to take hold and for once they do not appear as the the terror filled miasma my mind often experiences during sleep, which decimates conscious fears into subconscious brambles, forever tripping me as I fall into slumber only to find myself surrounded by the imaginings of my own doubt.

Now I fall like a feather and for the first time in a long time I'm having dreams that echo my vision work, that seem to go hand in hand with my waking spiritual experiences. Instead of the jungle of randomness that my dreams usually consist of, I found myself wondering through a realm of story, one in which the edges seemed soft as a feather yet they still cut like knife. It reeked of faerie, reminiscent of something in a Gustav Klimt painting. All of the architecture appeared fraught with the luxuries of gothic architecture and the decadence of  the Renaissance. Through the main halls within a cathedral I walked, wearing a swirling print top of red and black and a skirt  of a fine lace with a belt of blue bells. Continuously I was pushed and shoved about my women wearing Puritan cuts of white and they shoved me towards a man carrying a book which he stored in a ornate wooden box on a stand. When he left I rummaged through it convinced he was hiding something from me. 

But soon he returned and began ordering the women about to make ready as he took the book from my hands. Soon I began to feel contractions and suddenly my belly pushed out an infant lined in silver afterbirth. Overjoyed I took the babe in my arms but the women began to scold me. It wasn't over yet. Three more babes followed nearly falling out of me like stones. And without further elaboration I woke up. 

Initially I brushed it off as nothing more than a dream but as the day went on I found myself haunted by the image of the man with the book, wondering what it was all about. They was a livid quality to this dream that was uncanny in its articulation of detail.

Strange as it may seem I happen to have much of my vision work come to me in the shower. I don't know if it's the liminal property of water that induces such states or the fact I tend to run it as hot as it  is humanly possible to endure without getting burns that triggers the trance but either way, my spirit often just jumps out of me without warning while I'm bathing.

And just so, it happened yesterday. I closed my eyes to find myself standing in a lonely meadow with overcast skies and before me stood a cloaked man. He remained speechless for several minutes until I called out to him and he tossed aside his cloak revealing that he held between his hands the same illuminated book I saw in my dream as he let it fall open between his fingers. It began to blow away into pieces, flailing about into the wind, breaking down into nothing more than crumbling ash. He himself bowed his head as though in gratitude. When he lifted it again, his hood fell back from his face, showing a circlet above his brow which began to sparkle and shine. 

He whispered a thanks and then began to disintegrate  into sand, falling like granules in an hourglass. Fiercely the wind tossed his remains about the meadow and I realized yet again that I was not alone. Four entities emerged from the vignette edges of the scene as though they had just materialized from the artist's hand. Four figures, four infants. The dream continued into my waking hours. 

It's difficult to describe what came next, but slowly their separate identities began to coalesce around them, as they they were taking form and weaving personality even while I watched. But what was clear by the end of the trance was this: they were the disambiguations of a king obsessed with the world in wrote and an enby witch who is distilling all of the harmful toxic things we teach ourselves about what it is to BE out of their blood. It was as though this fae king,with his tome filled with edicts, slowly crumbled into what the universe knows as true change, and from the ashes and my own bleeding heart arose these four spectres beyond my wildest imagining.  

Kou - fae of the earth, boyish yet femme around the edges, bares his sword and hammer in honor and protection of Gaea

Filis - blind harpist whose long draping skirts and bare chest tickled by waist length hair  whirls around him as he sings to the wind and conjures spells out of its notes.

Sejic - genderless (pronouns they), wears the flames about them like a shawl and veil. Eternally conjuring the sacred fires. 

Vyrnig - Water nymph whose body extends as long tentacles which love to pry open the earth's legs in endless copulation. Hair is the unending flow of the river. 

Yeah, I'm not quite sure how that happened exactly, but while dreaming I seem to have birthed in the astral half fae kids who are the highest hopes of a withering fairy king who hopes to return himself to chaos (the true primordial souup) and me, the ever dysphoric, ever shifting, unstable witch of the fucked up earthen plane.

I know it sounds crazy - in fact, I'm not that far above from declaring it's probably just the wishful thinking of a new-age blunderhole who just wants to feel  special. But I have taken this time to talk about my depression and this strange and unusual journey work to discuss something that doesn't receive a lot of coverage in mainstream witch circles : dealing with mental illness while walking the path of Witch. When I am more than likely experiencing night terrors from adjusting to  a new medicine - does that make it anymore exempt from my valid spiritual experiences than say, a child's simple nightmare? When the depression hits and it seems to lead me to the netherworld places while entering the trance state, have my experiences suddenly become invalid because of how my mental state tinges that sort of spiritual journeying? When, in the everyday world, people would just call me paranoid or overreacting, would such reactions be acceptable in the context of your magical life? 

Well, the fact of the matter is, most people think we are already crazy and that it's all "in our head" anyway (whatever the hell that means, perception is literally ALWAYS in your head). But I think we would be discounting the whole wealth of experiences and wisdom that comes from lessons learned while crossing the hedge and simultaneously combating out own mental demons. If Inanna chooses to take me on a ride to the underworld as I find myself mentally on the dark side of the moon - then perhaps that is exactly what this witch boi needs and the journey is no less important just because I'm not emotionally "right." I think there are a lot of attitudes in the writings on magick that are out there that imply to not engage in magical procedures unless you are "fine," "in the right state of mind," or out of the dumps, as though it's dangerous to be a witch if you're anything less than a neurotypical average Georgina. Well, fuck that. Conjure your wards, weave your protection spells, but baby, if you wait till you're "all right" you might be waiting till your dead. If the great primordial bath is chaos herself, then we the mentally skewed gotta a reservation at the Hotel Shook. 

But this is how I am - me, the enby, AD/HD, mood disordered witch - and these fae kids are just as wild, varied, and irreconcilable as I know I am. They literally were born out of the ashes of the old hegemony - the fae king and his edicts fell apart to form them. They no longer form monarchies and dualities of king's and queens. They are working to make something far more wicked - astral creation writhing into dreams and streams.  Don't let anyone tell you that because you're differently abled or neuro atypical that your craft is less than others - that fucking mothergoddess witch we see everywhere doesn't exist. There is no witch that is just a hag, or just a rutting stag of man. We are  chaos made flesh and the void fills us all  - but maybe we, the left of center, have one foot in each world, and our home truly is everywhere and nowhere. And if that isn't the way of the Witch, then I don't know what is.

*paintings by Gustav Klimt in order of appearance: Judith and the Head of Holofernes, Danae, Adele Bloch-Bauer I, Judith II

New Moon

Recently the visions of the moon as the bones of our ancient ancestor planet ripped asunder from us have really taken dominance in my hedge crossing trances. Now I know this isn't just something conjured up by my witch crazy head - there is a scientific theory based on geological evidence found from both Gaea's and Luna's surface that this was once part of our objective reality. (click here to read more.) During the Solstice rites I performed in my home a few days ago, I made offerings to the Sun, the Moon, and the Earth, tying them together in a sacred triangle of divine form on the tentative metaphorical and energetic strings that binds them: the sun as the breath, the earth as the blood and dermis, and the moon as the skeleton of our small segment of the cosmos.

This formation of the three celestial bodies has superseded lately in my magical workings the more common thread I have held onto for years concerning the moon and the sun as spheres of occult influence which views the sun as the gateway for physical manifestation and the moon as the mirror through which we may pass in spirit and come out the other side in the world of the Fae/planes/astral/what-ya-call it. I'm not picky when it comes to semantics. Yes, Yes, words have meaning, they definitely need to refer to specific things, but when it comes to subjects concerning the "beyond," I mean, how definitive and certain can one ever truly be? If my work with the fae and the celestial has taught me anything, it's that as soon as you think you have an understanding or a mechanic of their world pin down, it shifts into something else, like some occult version of the Heisenberg principle.

 But when this new paradigm of our the three heavenly bodies which conduct our immediate physical reality came to me, it's like segment of the cosmic wall paper has been ripped down and I've found a message hidden from the previous owners scrawled on the dry wall. Now just like with any graffiti, that message could either be profound or about as deep as a twelve grader's scrawl on a bathroom stall reading as deez nuts. I mean, with the spirits and the gods, their language may be all around us, but they are not in any way obligated to infuse reality with some great religious revelation on our behalf. I've walked in on a local land spirit standing in front of a fallen horse. I remember thinking "what does this mean? Is this a symbol or incarnation of my own shadows?" when all he said as he turned to me was "lets put her down." A faery really just wanted some help putting down his fallen steed, not some grandiose demonstration of spiritual prowess. Once I met a little girl fae who seemed to be joy incarnate, but when her bubble burst (literally) what she wanted was for someone to summon her sister Crow.  I mean, to be honest, probably most of the situations I've encountered in faery/astral/what have you had very little to do with "spiritual enlightenment" and more to do with the actual everyday happenings of the world within our world.  And just like sometimes you want a grape soda, it's not surprising that Bubble Girl wants rosemary tonic. 

 Sometimes during the energetic swinging of moon, sun, and earth it's absolutely without a doubt a sign of the opening  and closing paths of the inter-dimensional and some times it's just Luna sneaking up on us to play a magical game of titty twister. So during this new moon I' like to take the time to remember that what's out there doesn't need to offer some big sense of enlightenment to validate it's own existence. The sooner you accept your magical path is hardly just the result of your own effort and will the sooner you realize the fun that being had by fae and spirit alike at your own expense.  I mean, it's probably not at all untrue that they love stringing us along when we think we are on some houttie toittie mystical adventure. Doesn't have to be one way.  But here's the kicker - you gotta learn to let go.  

It's funny -  so much of our ceremonial traditions in western witchcraft seem so concerned with every last detail as though a certain brandishing of silver inlaid swords is what makes the mistress of the ways open her skirts for us. Honey, our ancestors did that to her kin the fae  on mother Ireland and I promise you that is not why the portals to the other world open for you during a ritual.  They don't see this expensive reach of steel. All they see his your viscous yet piercing darkness, the immortal soul in you which reaches and sings eternally just to be let in for the shortest of seconds. And like the graffiti on the bathroom stall, sometimes what sees you in the dark wants to weave a wonder around you , and sometimes it merely wants to play. Crossing the hedge teaches you to make no promises about accomplishments. If you seek to ride the trance, it will usually just throw you off entirely, like a bear who some one attempts to tame past cub years.

And if this dark moon  speaks of anything it's of the emptiness it inhabits. It speaks on the destiny of bones buried beneath the soil of Nyx.  It's an emptiness which at times haunt me, echoing the most nihilistic styles of my depression fueled scripts, but now with my surrender to meaning's bed in nothingness' house, I see more. Luna in shadow burying her dead so the the crops of stars might grow. Luna turning away so she might makeout with her bff the night. Or Luna hooded and remote, casting bones in to the dark, waiting for us to move out of her light so that she might read what they prophesy. Perhaps Luna's bones are  fragments of us and so we scuttle during this time of the month hoping to fall into the shapes of our better selves.

New moon precedes new skin for old bones.

Posted a Spell Earlier this Week on Tumblr: Inanna Initiation Ritual

Inanna Ritual for Self Affirmation

I published this one on my tumblr for ease of access for my coven mates and the internet at large. Click on the link to see more. :)

The Tetrad , or The Gods are Trans

It's really not that far away from the point in time currently we currently occupy (well, for those of who have a linear frame of mind, but enough of that wibbly wobbley stuff here) . When I close my eyes I can still remember those first few months when I was learning about the craft and paganism in general. All of those memories of blundering attempts at invoking the god and the goddess based on half baked descriptions of them in water down mass market paper back distillations of Wicca hit me like a truck filled with lead barreling down the highway with brakes that were null.  

More than likely, if you come to know of the craft through mainstream sources, you probably know exactly what I am talking about. Opening up Scott Cunninham and Marion Zimmer Bradley to read about the big booby goddess of the womb and the earth opening her doughty self to some rutting stag of a hairy hunter - all of which tittilates the sense when you are twelve, but when you look between your legs and find something more jarring than the allegedly divine pussy all "females" are suppose to own, it's hard to take such images seriously. 

"The goddess is within you," mainstream feminine centered paganism whispers in you ear like a sweet spell, but wearing your own skin is like wearing that of a many layered beast, and not a single one of them is motherhood incarnate. When you put on lipstick, you look in the mirror and see boy god winking back at you hand in hand with his dike sister the moon. 

In the end, as I've grown into my body, the so called temple which houses the soul, I've realized that if we are in the likeness of the gods, then fertility goddess Fertile Myrtle and phallus sword wielding sky daddy are definitely not the end of Deity, but rather, a single granule of the many gods' presence. 

So fuck that hetero, nuclear nonsense. Give me the Gaea whose fertility brings monsters instead of spring, giants with hundreds of heads who each speak of their own crystalline being summoned from the grave of the earth. Show us the Inanna who bears the sword just as well as the thong and bends over for joy but also knocks the green god on his ass just for looking at her throne the wrong way. Give me the Artemis who aides the birth of babies and enbies like myself without hesitation. Even the monsters of her great granny are helpless in the beginning. Call on the Horned God whose vagina is perfect for bearing the cum of the summer's yearning, but whose real phallus exists as the index finger and middle finger pointing heaven word's up the lady's heavenly cunt. 

The truth is, if you take a real long and hard look, you see the fae are not really interested in missionary either. And shape shifter is not just a term applied to phasing into beast alone. 

Even the gods are in drag (see my boy Dionysus and all the rest) and I'm sorry, I'm not believing for a second that the goddess is at all concerned with just being one of the girls for forever and a day just because some human adult kids need a mother to remain gentle in their mind's eye.

Yeah, that's right. I'm calling your image of the gentle mother goddess simplistic and sexist. Women are not your receptacle of dreams. And neither are the gods in respect to their gender. 

Enter that Tetrad, a group of gods who were first honored by P. Sufenas Virius Lupus and eir's comrades in paganism.  Meeting them through Sufenas' blog and book was like a orgiastic homecoming party in which you walk in a wreck and leave with a new, bad ass crew. 

The Tetrad:  these are my UPG's mixed with descriptions from All-Soul, All-Body, All-Love, All-Power: A TransMythology

Panpsyche - 

Trans,  lunar goddess of  the word, Her name means "all soul" and she is a fierce defender of transkids and will turn the night sky black over those who step on and defile her children. 

Panhyle - trans, earth god of the body. His presence is in the emphasis of touch, of the material reality of the body, it's needs, and it's wants. He is the hunter, the lover who has little to say, but so much to give with just his embrace. His name means "all body" His godhood is concerned with the comfort of the transbody with theirself.. 

Paneros

 - metagender god who does fit within the binary and oversees the love of the transperson for themselves as themselves and not as other people percieve and read them. Eir's name means "all love"

Pancrates 

- Pangender god, savior of the cosmos from the destruction of Aphopis so in my view they are the keepers of the sacred ways of the universe and help maintain the wheels of creation. They are often seen bearing a sword and wearing armor.  Their name means "all power." The y are concerned with the empowerment of transpeople over the architecture of their own lives. 

Panprosdexia

 - agender god whose name means all acceptance. They are not in the original book in which the Tetrad made their debut to the pagan literary world so often when talk of the Tetrad includes them it is listed as the Tetrad +.  Sufenas has taken down their blog within the past year and I cannot recall everything I read about Panprosdexia, but if I recall correctly they are a psychopomp figure concerned with the self- acceptance of a trans person's identity. 

Please, if you are interested, think about buying Sufenas' book here. If you are trans/gender queer pagan looking for some divine love that honors your sphere of existence I promise it is well worth the twenty bucks you'll pay for it. 

All of this exposition on the Tetrad + has this goal in mind: us queers need our own gods. And I promise they are out there, by a million unspoken names, just waiting for us to meet them. I got a Summer Fae Queen just around the bend who had a green leafy pinecone the size of a car and when she runs her fingers along the tips her children fall out as spores on the wind.  Gone are the images of the singular big belly Ge with only her own progenation in mind - creation is identity itself in motion. And what is gender but the expression of creation trying on the infinite ways of the finite and mortal. 

 It wasn't until  Pancrates started barreling down my astral door, with their joint in hand, running their fingers through their buzz cut hair wondering if I was ready to start opening myself up to the idea that probably none of the gods are as they seem, that I realized what I had been missing. Without any hesitation, after I called their name, Pancrates was there, their sword sheathed at their hip and their shark tee billowing in the wind, asking me if I was ready to win the battle for my own soul. The only other gods outside of the Tetrad + who have touched me so deeply have been Inanna, Artemis, and Dionysus, all three of whom I consider protectors and agents of the queer. 

Queer is the natural state of the universe. Flux is the holy denominator of both mortal and immortal. 

And who are we to ague with god?

Sorry, loves, for the hiatus and all

If anyone has been reading this, I have been undergoing a bit of a health crisis so blogging has had to be on hiatus for now. But I haven't stopped writing, and I hope to publish some of those insights before fall ends.

During this time, though recovery has been difficult, I have learned a great deal about what I want out of my practice, and find myself returning to the basics of witchcraft yet again with an emphasis on hedgecraft's journeying techniques and largely meditative work in general, with tinges of kitchen witchery sprinkled in between. These changes will probably be reflected in my blurbs and the overall intent of the blog in general.

It's funny, but I have finally realized that my interests swing quite wildly within the span of the year as I dive into multiple fields of interest within the craft and pagan theology in general. And yet, it seems, the more lavish I get with my practice, the stronger the urge comes to simplify. So I think I need to sort of reset, and hone what I find the most enjoyable out of my personal spiritual frame work.

Recently, I think I have come to an understanding that full on recon devotional work may not be the best fit. This conclusion has come from the fact that what I love about worship and honoring those deities and forces that pervade the universe is communion, not servitude, so I suppose it would be a great injustice to those of the recon devotee community to claim I am one when I make no great effort to observe any single one holiday or rites pertaining to those gods whom my path has brought me to. Deiphon, Noumenia, & Agaithos Daimon is still one monthly tradition from my hellenic studies that I want to keep with me (I also plan to continue the communal rituals posted on Elaion's facebook page as work and life permits), as my bond with the Theoi still infuses me with a great love for the ancient traditions which honored them. It's also a great set of monthly spiritual "reset" rituals as well as displays of gratitude for the health and success of the home.

So yeah, I am definitely falling back in stride with crystals, astral journeying, and even a bit of space witchery (I have been reading phaesphore's & cosmic-witch's writings on the subject, which are great sources, let me tell you :) ). So far what is great about this corner of the craft is emphasis of learning the science and discoveries we have made about the cosmos just as much as it is connecting to it spiritually. Science plus witchcraft definitely equals my cup of tea.

Plus, visiting the Parthenon replica in Nashville has yet again deepened the chords of yearning for communion with the gods in me, and I hope to be doing a tea party for the gods so to speak in the next week or so. That's alot of offering bowls, but after standing before the replica of the statue of Athena and feeling those echoes of power and divinity that flowed through her image, I definitely want to tap into that more, without losing myself in all the pomp and circumstance that tends to occur for me personally when I dive into devotional work. I accept that I am a hard, devotional polytheist with non-recon slants( i.e. honor the gods, love the gods, engage in ritual of reciprocity, but don't beat yourself up for not adhering to every little holiday on a calendar set around a much more worship oriented culture than the one you live in now). And I am learning to be okay with that.

Thank you for reading,
Ecco

The Queer Friendly Gods: Inanna and Ereshkigal

*UPG (unverified personal gnosis) heavy, will try to label it as it comes up*

My journey with Inanna began about six months ago when I had a dream in which a figure radiating a spectrum of colors around them came to me. The colors reminded me of a rainbow reflected in a pool, appearing in patterns resembling the leaves of a lotus flower.  In between that lucid state between passed-the-frell-out and semi-conscious, I asked "Who are you?"

She answered, "Inanna."

During the next month I researched when I could in between the endless cycle of sleep and work what ever I could get my hands on about this ancient sumerian goddess. And what I found completely took me a a back. 

(the following descriptions of her myth cycle come from The Descent of Ishtar: both the Sumerian and Akkadian Versions and it's translations of the original sources, as well as the retelling of the myths in Inanna, Queen of Heaven and Earth: Her Hymns and Stories from Sumer. I highly recommend both, especially source #2 since the folklorist Diane Wolkstein is one of the writers.)

Inanna is a goddess of the sky and a war goddess who empowers her own seat of worship and civilization by stealing the magical codes of civilization called the Mes from Enki. Her character is basically summed up in so many words: "The kingdom of heaven and earth is mine for the taking."

So she establishes her city and has everything a goddess could want, A virile husband,   two sons (I'm convinced in my own UPG she has way more children than this), and six other cities devoted to her in time. The glimmering evening star really is queen in every sense of the word. She is brash and vengeful to anyone who harms and challenges her. Once, she utterly RUINED a man who raped her. (it was so good to see no rape apologies in this sex goddess' mythos). 

After reading this interpretation of the myth of Huppulu tree from matrifocus.com (the domain has expired on it, otherwise I would link to it), I realized that it maybe her ascent to power came at a great cost.

(in the orignal myth of the tree, please note it's recorded that Inanna wanted it to grow so she could make her throne out of it, so the following is very UPG centered)

She cut down her beloved tree to turn it into her throne (an icon of fertility that is fitting, i.e. the queen of heaven sitting on a fine piece of wood representing the earth - oops, accidental sexual innuendo). This resonated with the message of The Giving Tree, and it was an angle and question I continued to ask through out my studies of her (still on going): What price does one pay to be queen?

I found in this myth the undertones of a woman who  abandoned much of what she might have valued about herself as a child to attain a bit of her own freedom and power among the retinue of the sumerian gods. In the Hupullu tree myth, Littu, Anzu, and a serpent plagued the tree and she could not harvest it until Gilgamesh drove them out. Anzu is a mythical monster bird that causes quite a bit of trouble for the Annunaki later on. Littu is a female demon of sorts that scholars speculate later became pre-Genesis Lilith and the serpent far as I know is just a serpent who is said "would not be charmed" (the satan serpent of Genesis, maybe?).

It was hard not to picture a young girl who had to sacrifice so much of who she was as a woman wandering on the banks of the Euphrates: a wild nature, a child like sense of freedom who perhaps naively assumed that power is the only end goal. This nature could be symbolized by the concept of the serpent as a little kid's animal friend and Littu perhaps as what the other Annunaki would have viewed as a "lesser" self and wouldn't have tolerated once she ascended the throne.

So I couldn't help but wonder, what happened to Littu and the serpent after they were cast out of her tree? Littu fled to "wild places" and the serpent was struck (struck dead? the poem's wording is uncertain). If you think of serpents as emblems of rebirth, you know that this serpent's fate is far from meeting it's end. To me, it seems as though these were pieces of her divine nature she bargained off and cast to the Underworld in order to become queen. 

Her iconography prior to her descent myth cycle is one of an incomplete, unrealized self. She cuts down the huppulu tree and sits on her throne in Erech, so in that moment, she is queen of heaven and earth.

But what about hell (hell in the dark, ghost ridden, drafting, mud logged underworld sense)? 

Here comes the part (UPG heavy) I resonate with wholly as a non-binary pagan searching for a way to reclaim their queer body: When Inanna goes to the underworld to console her sister Ereshkigal  after her husband's death, she is forced to appear before her naked, is subsequently killed, and hung on a hook, left to rot in the dark of hell.  Seems extreme, eh? The result of a jealous, broken sister's hate for her sibling who gets all the earth's love in the light of day? Yes, the dichotomy of unloved, underworld deity vs. beloved over world god is rather obvious, but what I took away from this is that a transformation took place. Dare I say it, a transition of sort was about to unfold,in order to make Inanna whole again from where she severed herself from the girl she used to be when her huppulu tree fell to make her throne.

In the underworld and spiritual journeys therein, one is at times taken apart, sometimes violently, and put back together again. It is usually a painful psychological process and I would not recommend it to someone who has any reservations/hesitations about it. Often we need this sort of trans-formative healing when we are broken, but I would feel irresponsible if I advised it as the only mode of healing, or one that should be taken lightly, when there are other methods for healing that are less emotionally risky or draining.

Inanna is left in the underworld to rot for a few days on her hook before her devoted servant enlists the help of Enki  to bring her body back to life. Ereshkigal ends up getting something she wants in the bargain and so Inannna returns, fully realized as queen of Heaven, Earth, and the Underworld - a trifecta of sorts I think was necessary in her role as fertility goddess. And none of that sweet mother goddess stuff here - she would spit you out and kill your mom just as soon as you cursed her name.

Long story short, she banishes her husband for claiming the throne in her brief absence (without searching for her) for a portion of the year. It is the most dysfunctional hieros gamos I have ever come across and it is the wonderful boot in the gut for Inanna to deliver to the world - a way of saying, yeah, I'm the mother frelling QUEEN.

So what does all this mean for a queer friendly space with Inanna and Ereshkigal?

- Ereshkigal is an annunaki of violent transformations, and for me, transitioning has been an earth shattering, painful experience (I know who I am, but stressing that to others and the human world around me has been a living hell). Ereshkigal has held the hook by which I have actually willingly let myself be strung on in order to let the old me die so a new, resilient body can rise. She is often a goddess who can help you initiate what you are unable to do for yourself alone.

It's my UPG that Ereshkigal knew  death was necessary for the cycles of heaven and the underworld to align.  The foundation for spiritual rebirth is possible through the sky herself dying and quickening again.

Inanna's aspects (the serpent and Littu) of the Huppulu tree were banished by a young woman not even fully aware of the struggle that ensues in descending into hell to reclaim the pieces of oneself -those things you leave behind for the sake of orbiting in "civilized"circles.

Praise be to Innanna, Queen of Heaven, Earth, and the Underworld
Praise be to Ereshkigal, primary Queen of the Underworld

May my transitive spirit be reborn beneath your sky and within your glorious, dark earth. 

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. 

~~~~~~

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

Gender-Queer Gods (gender queer friendly gods) pt. 3 HERA

*the following is my UPG in regards to Hera as guardian of queer safe space for me. These writings are not intended to speak for any tradition or path but my own*

I never would have imagined in my wildest dreams that Hera, whom I previously had only understood as the queen of Olympus who fought against her husband's bastard children, would be a defender of my queer body. But I realized after sessions  of meditation and devotional journey work with a figure who appeared to me as Peacock Boy (a child who chooses the word boy, but identifies as everything and nothing at all) that she has children beyond those we only hear about in the myths.

While writing a devotional poem for Peacock Boy, I began to realize that there was a figure near his cavern where he would go to bathe and let the feathers from his skirt fall into a pool, wherein they transformed into hammer head sharks and swam in and out of the transparent nexus of him stationed in his torso. Here he would beckon me to join him, to let my own feathers and fur and skin fall away to be reborn in cthonic waters. It was during this journey work that I felt her, like a blade in the dark, watching from the cavern's entrance, and when I came to her naked, reconfigured and riotously alive, she smiled and said, FIDELITAS, the latin word for fidelity (I think she has done this since I am more acquainted with the sound of latin words rather than greek).

She was challenging me to remain loyal to myself. And that is when I realized she is queen for a reason. She fights so virulently in the myths to maintain her house and it's power because she knows that she is wholly worth it. She is an overseer of goodness and abundance and as Zeus goes down as Ktesios throwing out his seed as he goes, she keeps him by the horns and throws him down when he goes against their agreement, calling him out on not keeping their relationship in truth and transparency.

It is my UPG that Hera and Zeus have come to have a polyamorous relationship. I don't know if it is after centuries of waking in monogamy or that they have never subscribed to monogamy all together & we as humans just tried to harness their relationship within more socially respectable standards of engagement in the past (Zeus' behavior certainly indicates he has never been monogamous, although he used to never be honest about it far as the myths are concerned,). Poly relationships require absolute truth, trust, and transparency to thrive, and Zeus, being the father of Hermes and son of Kronos that he is, often does not conform to those values, which is a source of great consternation for his Queen. So that is why I say she grabs him by the horns, and doesn't hesitate to hold him accountable. She is the keeper of family and the destroyer of those who would interfere with her loved ones, and those who would threaten to take away her agency and power as queen of the Theoi.

With that sort of history, its not surprising to see that I was surprised when she took the time to show me and point out quite firmly, that she exists outside of her husband as goddess of fertility, as a guardian of women, and as mother to multiple, beautiful beings beyond those mentioned in the myths. Zeus spreads his seed, and Hera, with a sweep of her hand, summons the children of the world out of Ge, to rise up to the brush of her feathers.  She calls the rejected, protects the unloved, while smites those who rise up to threaten her sacred palace.

When Zeus did not lie with Hera for sometime, she felt an urge, a need to create, with a sweep of a peacock feather which she handed to Hephaestus, her child, the queer psychopomp who leads the lost gender variant souls to their bodies, was born. Hephaestus made a key in the shape of a peacock boy, and so I must, with great honor and respect, honor the mother of Peacock Boy who has set me onto the path of self love.

Thank you Hera. Libations and offerings shall be given in honor of what your fecundity has encouraged in this world. We are the unborn family Zeus did not give to you, but you firmly took, summoned, and grew for yourself out of the myriad, ever changing tides of Earth.

The barley blows in the wind, you walk by, and Demeter threshes from your rain and feathers bodies that shine like gold.


As always, thank you for reading,
Ecco

Genderqueer & Genderqueer friendly Gods pt. 2: Setting the Landscape by Destroying the old Constructs

*as always, heavily fore-warned UPG is coming*

Before I get back into the meat of this series (which is the gods themselves), a bit more for introduction into why I think challenging the gender norms in our religious structures is so vital.

The gods bring new revelations, open new doors of understanding, when our perspective broadens and changes, and so I think it's time to let them speak beyond the essentialism of our old gender constructs, so that these bodies which do not obey or adhere existing within the gender binary might find spiritual acceptance, emotional release, and  feel the divine love the that gods pour out for  their followers.

Since gender is self defined I feel like the gods most certainly do self define in regards to their appearance to us as humans. I tend to gravitate in my thoughts more the idea that the gods are not necessarily bound to any one form, but chose more often to appear to us as human/animal/energy/light, etc in order to more effectively communicate with us, and so, just as we have that right to self definition, the gods in this manner ultimately do too.

In modern western culture, we have bought way too heavily into the idea that there was only two ways of moving about within our bodies, and so the old associations have stuck with the iconography and descriptions of deities which have moved down the ages through books and artwork to land at our spiritual door steps today.  In my experience, only thinking of a god in one way imprisons the range of experience we can have with the gods and the spirits. (i.e. gentle mother Goddess Ge as a descriptor could pre-clude their role as a destroyer and monster rearer if we only ever use one set of modifiers in  our thoughts and approaches to them).

Goddesses such as Artemis and Athena were defined as virgins in ancient Greece. I must preface that I am still a student of ancient greek religion and culture and thus cannot claim that I speak with any authority on this issue, but from what I have read in Sorita D'este's Artemis: Virgin Goddess of the Sun and Moon, virginity was a status of childhood and a definer for a female who was not married, and fell under Artemis' protection. Once a female was passed on in marriage, she fell into Hera's domain. These two categories ultimately limited a woman's freedom and agency (let me emphasize the categories as social constructs are restrictive, not the goddesses themselves). From what I understand, there was no agency granted for women throughout most of their lives, though I think I have read Sparta might be the exception to this. Ultimately the ideal only applied to wealthy women, which the in the minds of people at that time the images of the goddesses definitely fall under the territory of the ideal.

I have taken you down this discussion of social ideologies in regards to gender and religion to point out that as a modern student of the Theoi and the spirits, I have had to take the concept of virginity, wad it up in a nice tight ball, and place it in my gender blender so that I understand what the hell all of this paraphrasing is getting at: in the ancient greek mindset, asking Zeus to let you remain a virgin (marriage free) was the only way to get agency and power for oneself. And obviously, such a privilege could only be granted to his daughters.  And so the goddesses in modern times I now know are just as wild, unbreakable, unchained as they ever were. I think now we are the better for understanding this, for we are learning new ways to take apart gender norms, and know these goddesses would have damn well taken it for themselves had almighty Zeus said no. I think that is why they still resonate with us so strongly as goddesses of empowerment.

But to circle back to the original point, gender norms and social constructs regarding them affect how we view the gods and so it is important to give deities a spiritual mindset and a place that allows them to speak for themselves, while allowing those of us do not fit in a nice cookie cutter either/or dichotomy, to worship, thrive, and feel just as loved as everyone else.. But I have often found, that when you do let the gods speak for themselves to you through prayer and journey work, they often completely destroy everything you thought you knew about them, while reinforcing their core spirit (i.e. Hera's value of loyalty) more than ever before.

And so before we begin with the first god I would like to discuss in how they have helped me feel safe in my genderqueer body, I want to take a minute to shout out how excited I am at the idea of reading (hopefully soon, when I get the money set aside) P. Sufenas Virius Lupus' book on the transgender and gender variant gods e has come to know (from what I have been reading on eirs blog, these gods are only a few years old <3).  All-Soul, All-Body, All-Power: A Trans Mythology is available for sale at create space. I am very excited at the idea of  the landscape of polytheism broadening as trans people and people outside the gender binary discuss how their worship and relationship with the gods works.

 I know for me personally, when you break down the language around you and how it codifies you in a gender not of your choosing, freedom becomes so sweet, and after hearing my friends call me "they" and Ecco repeatedly, I know that I am now clean to come to the gods in my true, whole self (I am still broken from dysphoria, but I am certain in my own identity).  I think that is why the publication of books on transgender and gender variant deities like the Tetrad are so valuable.

I hope the non-binary pagans can come out of the wood works with rapacity and intensity as the century goes on.

Our gods are here, they are often queer, and we are not fucking going anywhere.

And I actually do promise, the next round in this series will actually cover Hera. I finally made it through the bulk of notes on gender identity and how identity politics in religion can cause problems, so now that the foundation is set, the gods may be honored on the altars which rest upon it.

Thank you, as always, for taking the time to read,
Ecco

Honoring my household spirit, Dark Rabbit

In a churning of serpentine, raven dark locks which float around her body, her hair crisscrosses into a sacred veil which wraps around her with tangles as tendrils arcing out to fill us through touch with the love of the land (the hills and meadows bless us through her). When she parts her hair to let it fall down her back, her body is a puzzle of rotating keys which spin in segments along her torso, that various arrangements might unearth the future of our needs.

She guards the local underworlds where the souls of those in this city have become severed from their body due to trauma. In crypts in the Great Below they are bound and guarded until their bodies are ready for their return.

Her steed is a midnight black rabbit which carries her through the brush. She scoops up acorn secrets along the way so that Ge's hatchlings might receive the mystery of their moment's need.  She is the rabbit, as the rabbit is her.

I honor her along with other household gods and spirits on Agaithos Daimon, a hellenic ritual you can read more about here.

Spell Bottle - a concept still to be tried. But here's the tentative formula

Here is an idea for a spell I haven't executed, but I look forward to trying. I will post any thoughts or details that need to be curtailed for safety and/or practical reasons if anything sticks out in the execution of the project. Probably it would be best to preface that if you plan on using this idea, be sure to place the bottle when setting the wick on fire in a large, fire proof container in case the glass breaks from the heat (I have had that happen to me before with candles, so really, better safe than sorry, darlings)

1. Create a paper wick out while praying/chanting/raising energy/meditating (what ever method works best for you to execute your magic). Write on the wick your intent. Use sigils, sentences, verse, whatever works best for you. Make sure it is long enough to be lit and carry the flame all the way down to the bottom of the bottle of the bottle.

2. Grind up and charge herbs of your choosing which will work with your overall intent. I personally connect to the herb's energy (aka "spirit") and use smell texture, taste (be careful and read up on potentially toxic herbs before handling, please) to guide my choice.  Only use enough herbs to cover the bottom of the bottle in a small layer. My concern is that if you put too much in the bottle, the flame will become over blown to the point it becomes dangerous to handle.  I also plan on putting wood shavings in the mixture to help  the herbs burn through, because I have had difficulty lately with my concoctions burning only halfway burning through, and when that happens, I usually end up staring at the incense burner like "IDK, MAN, DID IT WORK?" (teehee, it's always hilarious, I assure you).

3. While it burns, I plan on asking the spirits to open the ways so that fumes from the herbs will lead me into that place in the spirit world which will reveal which path/what is neccessary/what insight is needed to let the spell do it's work (in you, outside of you, and through you).

4. Where ever they lead me, I will write down the key images and messages that are made apparent there. I think these will be the keys to the spell's unwinding and release into the physical and spiritual body.

5. Always thank the spirits and gods and leave appropriate offerings. This is not a bribe, this is simply gratitude that they were kind enough to be with you in your journey and workings today.  And even if they do not come, you honoring them for inspiring your work.

6. Be open to a lack of the god's and/or spirits interest in your aims and workings. If disinterest seems to be the case, you will have to use your will as the main mechanism which drives your intent through. Do not despair, your own agency is a star peaking through this cloudy night.
And I promise, sometimes, it is more than enough.



*this is an untried spell, but I'm writing it as a ritual outline for when I do execute it. If you do use anything in this post, exercise caution and common sense. Keep a fire extinguisher handy when dealing with fire. SAFETY IS VERY IMPORTANT.*

The Genderqueer Gods (or those which generate a spiritual safe space for me) & combating gender norms in religious structures

*all spiritual experiences contained below should be forewarned as being of my own UPG and are not intended to override or speak with authority on anyone's traditions other than my own personal path*

This was an post of sorts that I thought would only be one little essay, but since, after a lengthy introduction and a discussion of how social constructs put blinders on us when we approach the gods, I realize that now it will probably be a series of sorts on the subject.

The gods you can expect to hear about in the future are:

• Hera
• Innana & Ereshkigal
• Loki
• Thor - which was a surprise to me, as the Snorri myths are pretty rife with inflated, overblown masculinity, but I will explain in due time. 
• Artemis
• Freya
• Dionysus
• and last but certainly not least, dearest, darling Baphomet - a deity who is the most responsible for helping me reclaim my omnigender/genderqueer identity.

As a devotional polytheist and witch who honors the both the greek and the norse gods, it can be challenge to let the gods speak through myth while also striving to remember that they are cloaked in human trappings in these tales. I think that is why it is of vital importance that I give them opportunities in ritual and journey work to speak on themselves in a way that is independent of the icons they were cornered into in the past.

As a witch more specifically, I think that if I am going to ask for aid from deities and spirits alike, I better damn well know who they are and have a relationship based on respect, not just an approach that is a "one-stop-capitalistic-god shop" that only invokes them in magic circles when it suits me, and ignoring them the rest of the time. Witchcraft is spiritual empowerment for me, but I will not misuse the names of the gods and the spirits by not taking the time to get to know them, both through research and UPG.

As a queer bodied person coming more firmly into their own body, I must make time to ask the gods who I have worked with previously how they transcend the cis/het and misogynistic narratives they were packaged into in the past and how they challenge these structures in their divine works.

I will never be the polytheist who thinks the gods only want blind obedience. I think understanding is the key for a strong reciprocal relationship, and so this post sets a foundation of trans and genderqueer positivity & safe sacred spaces that I need to help dispel dysphoria and fear in my spiritual life.

The gods are not defined by human notions and stories alone - what these reflect more than anything, is our limited understanding of them and our own societal values. I think often times the gods come to us within certain constructs and under certain themes since that is how they will communicate more effectively within our own culture. But if we do not recognize and challenge how constructs such as gender and institutions of sexism shape how we work with those values, we have cut ourselves off from the fullness in experiencing deity, and often times,  given power to systems of oppression (against others and ourselves).

I want to give my gods the space to voice acceptance for the queer body. Trans/queer/intersex people deserve to know that they are loved by the deities they love and honor. And so this post is a chance to explore through writing the ways that love has been made apparent to me.

Gods and People are plurality. 

Ge is many faced, held by the sun, holding the moon, in the science of perfect love. And we, the non binary, are coming out of their sacred caverns, blooming like manifold petals from the quantum lotus. And I will learn from the theologies, both old and new, and from many schools of magical thought,  and  where this cave spills out upon, as daimons in body and heart,  we will spill out across Ge's 21st century. 

We are kicking down the temples to build up new ones -

doric pedestals in which the transgressive body takes a stand to say

We are sacred, too. Our bodies are hallowed by the dawn, too

Innana's children, Ereskigal's spooks, we come in many forms. 

And we are not letting the old paradigms swallow us whole EVER again. 

Up next in the series: more on social constructs, and an introduction to Hera's non-binary safe space. :)
Thank you for reading,
Ecco