From up here, I’m looking down on the hill crest and
its strange solitary inhabitant. Even from a distance I can tell
that tree is hollow, though it’s very much alive and healthy. I
sense that its roots have no end, that I could stand upright in
its trunk and follow the root system to other places, other
worlds, climb its branches far above the clouds. That’s not
such a strange idea. The shaman said the worlds of the
Dreamtime are connected, and this tree is somehow that part
of that connection.
I’m at the highest peak that I can see in the range of
mountains looking out over the landscape of my lower
world…and I feel it looking back at me. I wonder if Columbus
noticed the land of the New World staring back at him
when he first saw it and if he had any idea what it had in store
for him as he paced off its breadth and made his own plans?
I know I didn’t discover this place. But it will be
where I discover myself.
Energetic Connection
“Have you heard back from your friend?” she’ll ask, her eyes boring through me, and I’ll find a way to look the other way or change the subject or tapdance around the truth.
I don’t think she’d understand this empathy Jesse and I have developed so that we can feel each other’s thoughts miles away. She doesn’t think I should be dating just one person yet, that I should be enjoying dating in general but relishing my freedom. She insists I need to be on my own a while to figure out who I am. She doesn’t want to see me go from an abusive relationship to a new relationship with a man who is as wounded from his last marriage as I am. When what I tell her about Jesse doesn’t match up with her idea of what a romance should be, she tells me to forget him and move on. Even if Jesse and I weren’t spending every possible spare minute together, I couldn’t move on from what I’ve found. When you form this kind of soul-level connection with another person, you can’t just dismiss it if they miss a phone call and Jesse’s not the most organized man I’ve ever met…but I accept him as he is.
Maybe it was a mistake in telling Jan about discovering my “energetic connection” with him. At the time, I didn’t think anything of it. I was so surprised and overwhelmed to find myself inches away from the man Leo had prophesied that I ran straight home and called my two best friends, Jan first.
from –
|
|
Totem Animal
She walked the outer rim of an imaginary circle around the man on the floor. He didn’t seem to be breathing. What if he was dead? Not a jury in the South would convict her. Self-defense, they’d say. A young woman defending her home and herself. As long as no one knew she was a witch. Some people still didn’t have a clue about what witchcraft really was.
Still, she’d never killed anything before. Except for that one time on the backroads when a black Labrador had darted in front of her car. It had been well past midnight and in the middle of nowhere. There’d been no street lights in the country and no way of seeing the dog until the headlights flashed on his sleek body a split second before she heard the thunder of his bones hit her bumper and crunch beneath her tires. She’d known better than to touch an injured animal, yet she’d slammed on brakes and run to him anyway. The dog had died in her arms. She’d grieved it, too, crying and rocking it in her arms until dawn. Somehow it had forgiven her, she was sure, because it often came back to her in her dreams as her totem animal.
–from
Esbats
What she couldn’t accept was Jacob’s silence. If only he believed. If only he understood. She wanted more than anything to share with him how it felt to perform magick. The warmth and energy in her fingertips. The sense of the Goddess filling her at her esbat, or full moon, rituals. The vibrations of stones and herbs sending out their essences, their spirit, to all who would accept their gifts. The connectedness she felt with all living things and all things of Earth and Sea and Heaven and Fire. Or just someone to listen when she needed to talk about her visions.
–from Witch Moon Waning
Athame/Dagger/Knife
