Samhain Mysteries

It's the night of Samhain (here in the Southern Hemisphere) – when, according to Pagan tradition, 'the veil thins' and we not only remember and honour our dear departed and our ancestors, we may be visited by them.

All week, around town, I have kept seeing women who looked like Yasoda, a friend who died a little earlier than a year ago – and then they would turn around and the resemblance would fade. Only tonight I thought, 'Oh of course. It's Samhain.' And then a friend reminded me it was recently the anniversary of her passing. So I guess that between these dates she would come close.

Late this afternoon, I was sitting in my living room with three friends. One looked up, over my shoulder, and said, 'Someone's here.' I turned and saw nothing, but did feel a presence very strongly (which is my more usual way of perceiving the other-worldly). She said she'd seen someone 'flit' down the passage, someone apparently very familiar with the place, and had enough of a glimpse to see his height. 'Short,' she said, and I wondered if it was Andrew (my late husband). She went over and indicated where his height had reached – exactly the same as her own. I measured her against me, and said, 'Yes, that must have been Andrew.' He was just a fraction shorter than me, and she came to the same height. I picked up a pendulum which was once Andrew's and asked if it was him. I got a big yes. (This was a woman who knew Andrew for many years and loved him dearly.)

The sense of a presence abated, and we all decided to go to that same friend's place to celebrate Samhain with a fire in her fire pit.
It was a lovely, relaxed evening. She spoke some words to honour the ancestors, including the ancestral indigenous owners of the land we live in, and we mentioned by name our loved ones who had gone 'beyond the veil'. I included, without specifically naming them, 'My beloved cats, and dogs.'

(We burnt a broken old wooden chair on the fire.)

When I came home, my next door neighbour was just driving out. Good! I would not be observed from his back yard. An opportunity too good to miss. I grabbed my wands, went outside and cast circle. Remembering my dead all over again, when I came to my cat Selene, whom I did mention specifically this time, I couldn't help some moments of sobbing.

Back inside afterwards, I saw that one of my friends had left a pencil behind, on the coffee table we'd all been sitting around. I picked it up to put aside for her, thinking to give it to her next time I see her – and then I saw something else on the coffee table. Let me explain that I had cleared and wiped down that table before my friends arrived in the afternoon. Then we had all sat around it with cuppas, buns and biscuits. At no stage did anyone see this item, which was now clearly visible in the middle of the table – the sheath of one of Selene's claws.

Selene went to her Summerlands on March 4th. Since then the coffee table has been wiped down a number of times, and the floor vacuumed.

Just now, as I type this, I am hearing noises from my kitchen. It sounds like the way my old cat, Levi (who died in 2015) used to go around and bump all the cupboard doors with his nose when he wanted to be fed.

Because I am who I am and live the life I do, these occurrences don't greatly surprise me. But they do make me glad.

Magic as a Way of Life

I hear some of my witchy friends deploring the fact that they don't actually do much any more to express their spirituality. No elaborate rituals, no particular observances.... I'm the same. 

For us magic is synonymous with our personal spiritual paths, so it can seem like a terrible failure of integrity if we're not actually doing any.

I tell my friends, 'You've probably integrated it into your life in ways you don't even notice any more.' 

I'm now more sure than ever that this is true. I've recently realised how very much it's the case with me. I realised it by contrast with the many people for whom it is not true because magic is no part of their lives. 

Some poetic experiences brought it home – some poems overtly about living a magical and other-worldly life as a matter of course – which my non-magical friends read as being metaphorical or about dreams or wishful thinking. I know this from comments people leave at my poetry blog on those particular poems. It's as if they can't quite hear what I'm really saying; it's too far out of their interpretation of the world.

That's no fault of their own – and in any case, they are there primarily to appreciate the poem and to comment on the poetics. But it interests me very much as witch rather than poet.

Working with Light

There's the poem I mentioned in my previous post here (this poem) which turned into instructions for working with light – real energy work with real results. I think only one commenter got it. Others were very appreciative, but more with the sense (nay, assumption) that it was a nice idea and that's all – something, perhaps, that could make me feel better, an imaginary remedy against imaginary evils. 

I link to my poems on facebook. My friends there include people I know in 'real life', some of whom are highly spiritual themselves in ways that include the esoteric, so there it was sometimes received as saying what it was indeed saying. One friend said she would immediately start teaching her very young grand-daughter how to use light in that way. Good! When I share these handy hints for free, it's nice to know someone finds them useful. How wonderful if all young children could be so taught.

Apart from that, the whole experience reminded me how often I myself use light energy in the ways I described in the poem. Often, I don't even think about it; when a situation comes up where it could be useful, I just do it. After all, it doesn't need any physical tools or great preparation, only intention and visualisation. 

At other times, such as in situations where healing is needed, I might be more deliberate in choosing to use this method, as I have a number of healing tools at my disposal. It can be a case of deciding which, or which combination, best suits the particular need in the particular circumstances. But anyway, it's a thing I do quite often, without perceiving it as a special magical practice, though it actually is.

Everyday Magic

The next poem is called Understand That This Is A Dream, so it's perhaps not surprising that some readers thought I was describing an actual dream, or a series of them. I was in fact writing to the idea that 'life is but a dream' (as it says in the old children's round, 'Row, row, row your boat...'). 

I took my title from an Allen Ginsberg poem, which might have made it clear – if everyone knew that poem, but of course not everyone does. (These days, no-one can know all the poems there are, even by famous poets.)

What my poem does is describe the events of the day on which I wrote it, some of them very mundane indeed and the rest quite commonplace for me, e.g. being 'inspired to wear / around my neck a silver dragon'. This one (not real silver so much as silver in colour):

Nearly all my jewellery carries energy, either by virtue of holding a particular crystal or by being in the shape of a symbol with power (e.g. a pentacle or a triquetra). I do get intuitive feelings as to which piece to wear on a particular day. Often I tune in on purpose when getting dressed for the day, but sometimes one piece or another will 'call' to me even before I tune in. I take such a call to be guidance as to what I need that day. (It might be protection, or extra insight, or the ability to communicate clearly and be heard ... whatever the particular crystal or symbol is empowered for.) 

This is such second nature to me, I forget that most people probably don't do it – just as I forget that it is one of the ways in which magic is incorporated into my everyday life. 

I forget too that many people (probably most) would think it sheer nonsense to believe that crystals etc, could have any power whatsoever. Others might credit it to the placebo effect, where the belief itself has results (giving the person extra confidence, for instance) which can show up in actual experiences. Some might, like me, realise that crystals have their own specific chemical compositions, and further suppose they can cause specific effects. Others would say the second part of that sentence is pseudo-science.

The point is, I take it for granted and it's an everyday part of my life. Most readers of the poem seemed to regard it as part of a dream – and not in the sense that life itself is a dream. (I would have thought that utterances such as, 'I seem to exist, along with a world / that feels real, firm to the touch' might have been a clue. But I guess I wasn't spelling it right out.)

Other things in the poem – such as 9 being a magical number, or a friend who wanted 'a jar with a red-checked lid' being given one almost immediately by 'someone who didn't know this' – are also commonplace to me.  

Spirit Visitations

People were kind and sympathetic about my poem, I Scarcely Realised, describing the turning point from when I longed for my late cat Selene to visit me in spirit, to the moment when I realised she already did – in her own way, which was always, even when she was alive, to use telepathy and plant images and ideas into my mind.

Then I went on to describe how, having finally understood that and thereby removed a block, I was able to feel it physically when she came and settled on my legs when I lay down, just as she used to in life. 

Some readers appeared to get it; others seemed to suppose it was wishful thinking or deliberate fantasy or something. (Hard to know what they were thinking; I am so far removed from a world where such manifestations as I describe can't be 'real'.)

So, in conclusion

1) I was surprised by the 'non-believer' response to these poems – and how general it was, even though there were some exceptions. Even people of a very spiritual orientation seem to prefer to think that the spirit world cannot be perceived by the senses in this dimension.

2) In showing me how different my own viewpoint is from the general one, I was able to see how much magic and the unseen are integrated into my life, not a separate thing tagged on or overlaid, or trotted out on special occasions, but just natural and normal and always there – as much there as the components of the physical world and all the behaviours which serve me well in the physical. In fact I don't generally distinguish them.

3) I do like the practice of ritual etc, too, and participate when more formal group ceremonies are on offer. I even sometimes create them for my own solitary practice. But I have also learned they are not absolutely essential and I am not necessarily failing at witchcraft if I don't do them.

4) What applies to me must surely apply to my witchy friends too. They are probably magical all the time, and don't need to beat themselves up for not doing more formal stuff. 

I think we're all simply living it.


Note: Light image is credited as Public Domain. 
The photo of the dragon pendant is mine Copyright © Rosemary Nissen-Wade 2019 and must not be re-used without my written permission.

How to Use Light

... to overcome your fears, and in many other ways.

I was asked to write a poem on what would have scared my childhood fears – and found myself writing an instruction manual!

But it's still a poem, so you'll find it here.

Tarot Reading on the Death of my Cat, Selene

‘The Back in Time Tarot Book’ by Janet Boyer is subtitled, ‘Picture the Past, Experience the Cards, Understand the Present’ – where one selects the cards to comment on a past event, and in the process of examining them gains greater understanding of what occurred.

One doesn’t pull the cards intuitively, sight unseen, or shuffle and let them fall as they may, but actually looks for images that seem pertinent. (Of course, intuition will be operating too, just naturally.) 

l decided to try the BIT method regarding Selene’s death. I didn’t immediately realise that I was actually selecting cards to represent Past, Present and Future. It was only when I started to group together cards that seemed to fit with each other, that this became apparent.

The first observation on each card is the reason I picked it. The following notes in each case are the further insights I gained from examining it.

Row 1 PAST:

MOON 
I named her for the Moon Goddess.

Looking down from above (in our home above the street, high up at the top of the front steps) she was safe from the neighbourhood dogs we heard barking outside. Home was both castle and fortress for her (like the towers depicted on this card). The crayfish (or yabbie!) coming out of the stream reminds me that water dragons would come into our back yard and she liked to play with them.
Home was her place of safety and enjoyment.

Queen of Wands 
Black cat at Queen's feet. 

I work magic, and she was my familiar.

2 of Cups

We grew to love each other intensely. Our lives revolved around each other. It was a very equal relationship.
Caduceus – our relationship was healing for us both, and blessed by the Angels (represented by St Mark, the winged lion).

DEATH 
She died.

Flag aloft, with heraldic rose, looks like one of my pentacles with a similar design. I conclude she can work better magic from that state.

STRENGTH 
Reminds me of vet and nurses examining her teeth.

Maybe it was because of her teeth she was starving herself – but using anaesthetic to attend to them would have stopped her heart anyway (because of her other ailments). Her death was inevitable.

Row 2 PRESENT:

4 of Swords 
Now I rest alone.

Three swords above: my family who have gone on, Andrew, Freya and Levi. 
One sword still near the bed. Selene, more recently gone; I'm still conscious of her recent presence beside me on the bed, and present absence from that position. 

3 of Swords
I grieve.

Three swords, three lost cats (from this household). Crossed swords slightly in background, Freya and Levi; front centre, Selene.

5 of Cups 
I am sunk in gloom for what I have lost.

I'm not yet ready to notice what gifts remain.

4 of Cups
Everyday life has lost its savour.

I am being offered new spiritual possibilities.

Row 3 FUTURE:

Queen of Cups 
I'm remaining withdrawn and dreamy.

But I'm also holding a huge magic lantern – suggesting possibilities of rewards in both magic and meditation. Mysticism?

Queen of Pentacles 
In garden, holding coin.

I can actually enjoy being in my garden more now, not less. (I had to limit her time outdoors for reasons of weather and health as well as safety, and keep a close eye on her. This limited my time there as well.) 
And I will have more money available to me without the expenses associated with a pet.

WORLD 
I am now freer to travel

 ... freer in many ways.
A card of rejoicing.

EMPRESS
Again the garden (sans cat).

I'm right to choose to enjoy life on my own now instead of getting another cat; I'll be both more powerful and more relaxed for it.

HIGH PRIESTESS 
Note book on lap.

Now I can focus more time and attention on spiritual matters – and on writing and publishing. Not to mention reading!

Missing: (UNEXPECTED INSIGHT) 

One Queen is absent; I never even thought of her until later, when I noticed one missing: Queen of Swords. The independent woman, the widow. Also one who relies on her intellect; can be ruthless. When I did finally notice, it seemed like a very interesting omission.

I believe the absence of this card in this reading indicates that I am not totally bereft, not without help and support, and don’t need to become hard or fierce. Much as we had a deeply loving relationship, it was not like a spousal connection; I'm not widowed. (Well, I am; but not in this connection.)

And perhaps it says that she has not really left: the loss more apparent than real. I like to think it tells me she will still be my companion and familiar from a different dimension. I have wanted this and been told by a very psychic friend that it is permitted. I'd like to take this card (the absence of it) as further confirmation.