I try very hard NOT to be that whinging bitch that everyone wants to slap, but I've wanted to sit down, pout and scream "Why me? Why do I have to do this/feel this/endure this/sort this shit out while every other fucker in my life seem to get a break?" pretty well most of the time this year. Of course, my head says that every other fucker isn't getting all the breaks (I can think of a hell of a lot of my craft-sisters who have had much more shit to handle than me this year), but my worn-down heart and soul still wants to pull a temper-tantrum and make it ALL GO AWAY.
So, this year so far has seen me get two jobs, one of which I love, one of which I hated and nearly sent me to the nut-house. Both jobs have now ended, one of which I'm really sad about but hopefully it will resume soon, and the other is classed as "thank the fuck for that, minimum wage is not enough for me to spend ten hours twice a week being verbally abused". The Hubster got sick after working seventy hour weeks and eventually had to leave a job he originally loved. (The upside is, he's got a job closer to home, less hours, no phone calls 24/7 - but the pay is poor.) Money is, as ever, elusive. And then my beloved Grandfather died very suddenly.
I'm still constantly chasing my own arse never actually managing to quite catch up with all the jobs that need doing. I keep failing miserably at keeping all the Hekatean observances. I just about manage to keep PL in coffee, but I've still not started on the shadow work I KNOW has to be done before my head implodes.
And then in my mundane wife/mother/daughter role I am running like a friggin' idiot just to keep up with cooking, washing, cleaning, organising homework, listening to parents' issues, volunteering, and every other little thing that needs doing EVERY DAMN DAY like feeding the cats, cleaning out the litter tray, emptying bins.... oh, you know the sort of thing.
What I want to do is waft around purposefully, priestess-like, calmly and assuredly carrying out my solemn duties, or ecstatically dancing through the woods, disappearing into undergrowth only to reappear with baskets of foraged gifts. Or being a gleaming naked woman lit by candle-light, celebrating the turn of the season by shagging the Hubster senseless.
Yeah, and somewhere in all that lot I have to squeeze in a bit more than five hours sleep a night because I'm starting to look haggard.
Now I'm pretty impervious to gentle direction from the gods. They do have to slap me around a bit before I pay attention. (Honestly, I'm pretty certain they sometimes regard me as a particularly ungainly, slightly stupid puppy who they get exasperated with but are rather fond of, because she does TRY, bless her...) So I don't expect them to turn up in my dreams, which I very rarely remember anyway. But oh, oh, oh..... this dream hit me with a sucker punch that whacked it straight from short-term memory into the box that says "Never to be forgotten even if you damn well want to".
In this dream, I was sat on a park bench. Looking at litter and wishing I had a bag so I could pick some of it up. It wasn't a park I knew, but next to the bench was a huge rock, half buried in the ground, which was hollow and open on the side next to me. Someone had dug a flower bed that went under the cave of the rock, and in a semi-circle outside of it. Planted in it, in regimental concentric circles, were bright red salvias and black petunias. Either side of the rock were two lit torches. A woman with deep black hair and 'Hollywood Diva' style sunglasses that covered most of Her face pulled the torches out of the ground and came and sat next to me.
"Here," She said, "Hold these."
I held a flaming torch in each hand, and the sky went dark. The torches reflected in Her glasses.
"You can't ever be my Priestess," She said, without preamble.
I didn't say anything, but the feeling of not being good enough - YET AGAIN - became overwhelming. It became a struggle not to cry.
"You do know why, don't you?" She asked.
I didn't move.
"Because you need to be needed. It's in your blood, your genes, your soul. You're always like this. You WANT to be Mine, exclusively, but you simply can't. And so you make sure that you are needed. You DO the mundane, the essential but ultimately unnoticed work that you need to do. That others need you to do. You mop up the shit, you take out the bins, you scrub the floors. You bear children, and devote yourself to their well being. You can't have the focus you need to be My Priestess, My Torchbearer."
Part of me wanted to argue, frankly, because at that point I was holding Her bloody torches.
"You're not cut out for ceremony, for regimented practice and devotions I request of My Devotees. You never have been. You never will be. However hard you try, whatever else you do - in this you will always fail."
I'm not proud to admit I wanted to shove those torches into any orifice of Hers I could reach.
At that moment, the torches flared, and I was sat in a garden chair in the middle of my vegetable patch. Somehow, the driveway in front of me led straight into the entrance to 'my' woods, and behind me I could feel 'my' cemetery.
She was no longer visible, but Her voice vibrated from everywhere.
"You are My hidden one. You learn from the ground beneath your feet. You learn from the spirits I send to you. You make offerings to Me every time you serve this land, these people, these plants, these creatures. Death holds no fear for you, and never has. I marked you many lifetimes ago, yet still you learn this not. Frankly, child, I'm fed up of waiting."
Two disembodied hands in black gloves materialised in front of me, and took the torches, which extinguished with a guttering crackle, leaving me in complete darkness.
"I can wait no longer. Now you will see."
And I could. Everything looked a bit like the end of The Matrix, when Neo finally sees all the computer code in the illusions around him. But instead of green letters and numbers, it was red circles, spirals, helices, that gradually faded back into the dim shadows of plants.
Of course, before I could open my big gob and start with the questions, I woke up to two huge yellow eyes in front of my face and cat-food breath up my nose (how the hell that cat opens the door and gets upstairs every night eludes me.)
So. Stupid puppy dog that I am, I've apparently been putting all my efforts (my apparently bloody useless efforts) into duties that are not mine to do. And all the shit/crap/boring stuff? Is what I'm supposed to do. The not-fun-stuff. The stuff of service to lots of people that generally either don't notice or don't appreciate the stuff I do. And I'm guessing I'd better stop bloody moaning about it, and get on with dinner, the washing up, and hoovering the lounge floor that seems to have more cat fur on it than the cats. And work out what the fuck were all those red spirals, circles and helices about.
I am Hekate's friggin' housemaid.
I did, you know. A lot. I had a wardrobe full of red dresses. And purple, green, pink, blue, patterned, spotted, striped, lace encrusted, crushed velvet - well, it was the early nineties. I loved colour. I wore it with flair, with matching shoes, bags, flamboyant jewellery, makeup, a brisk highlighted bob. A beaming smile, and sashaying hips. I did. Look. Proof.
I opened my t-shirt drawer this morning, after putting on my black jeans, grey socks and mismatching underwear to be greeted by a uniform dullness of grey. I now own six t-shirts that are grey. Three black ones. Two navy blue. Three brown and one a dull beige. In shock, I pulled out the three (other) pairs of jeans I've been wearing. One grey, another black pair and a faded dark blue. I looked at the pile of work clothes. Varying shades of black, grey, beige, brown, dark green, navy.
Where the hell did my colour go? What the bloody hell has happened to me?
You see, it's not just the colour of my clothes. I can't remember the last time I wore make-up. I can't recall properly drying and brushing my hair until it shone. When I had a bath to relax, rather than quickly get clean before the flies liked me more than the Witchlets did. It seems I'm rather neglecting myself. Not only that, I think I'm subconsciously trying to disappear.
I have some half-formed ideas as to why; I have so much less solitude than I used to - volunteering at two schools now, college one day a week, working at lunchtimes at school as well and just about to take on ANOTHER volunteering role - this is not ME. Or rather, it's not who I used to be. I'm now very much The Neighbourhood Witch, who is known by at least ninety local kids (the joys of being a dinnerlady - I can't go anywhere without hearing my name being called by little soprano voices!) and associated families. They know me at the library, the childrens' centre, the local shops, the post office, the church - I KNOW! ME! THE LOCAL WITCH! ON FIRST NAME TERMS WITH THE LOVELY LOCAL LADY VICAR! - and The Hubster laughs as we walk along the road and I interrupt our conversations to say hello to at least ten people on the two-hundred-yard walk to the Co-Op. Who I Used To Be would have rather curled up and DIED rather than all these people know her, but Who I Am Now is mostly enjoying it.
And yet... I'm apparently trying to hide, chameleon-like, in full view. Of everyone. In black/brown/grey/one-size-too-big-for-me clothes. Unremarkable. Nonthreatening. You'll see me, enough to raise your hand and say Good Morning - but you won't quite notice much about me.
I do have self-esteem issues. (Doesn't everyone? To some degree?) I have never been 'good-enough' - not for a lot of people, and certainly not for me. If I fuck up, I can't just shrug it off, learn from it, and move on. I obsess about it, worry constantly, pick every minute detail apart until I'm a wet puddle of angst, railing against my failings in the middle of the bathroom floor. I'm constantly questioning my motives, my agenda, my thoughts, my feelings, until I have no idea what's real, what's paranoia, what's me, what's everyone else, and what the hell way is up out of this damn ocean I'm drowning in.
And so I make myself busy. Busy cooking, baking, volunteering, gardening, foraging, growing, cleaning and cleaning and cleaning and cleaning. And with two Witchlets, two and a half cats (that's a whole other story I'll get into later), one husband and a house full of STUFF, there is ALWAYS cleaning to do. It's all distraction. Things to do to stop me doing the one thing I should be doing, the one thing Hekate and PL and The Old Man and Mother Elder and my own (small) internal voice of reason are telling me to do: sit my fat arse down in front of a mirror and face myself. Call it what you will - shadow work, internal travelling, plain old reflection work - I've got to damn well do it and I DON'T WANT TO. The last person I'd ever want to invite to a dinner party I'm throwing is me. Me and I just don't get along. I make Me want to shudder. Me gives I the creeps (fuck Me, I don't half whine on and on). But I've got to do it. Because I've given Me one hell of shit year so far, and I'm not carrying this crap any further if I can help it (or I'm going to end up parcelling up sacks of shit for the Witchlets to carry as they get older and notice this is how I treat Me).
Today was shit. I suffered from paranoia, rage, fear, hormonal mood swings (fuck you, menopause). Today I wore my black jeans, scraped back hair, no makeup, no jewellery, flat shoes as normal. But I found a red t-shirt to put with it. Visibility returns.
This is gonna hurt, isn't it?
I spent years trying to get a personal connection to the Gods. Years. Way back when I was in my early teens, I flirted briefly with British evangelical Christianity. That ended abruptly; the “pastor” decided he liked looking at magazines imported from Europe catering for those with a taste in younger women. I was outta there like a shot - although my boyfriend of the time stayed for a while. Proves that the Catholic Church doesn’t have a monopoly on priests with paedophile tendencies. When I was 18, I discovered Wicca. And Silver wotserface. This appealed to me; no more listening to what others told me I should believe in, time to do it FOR MYSELF. I still have all the original journals and writings I did back then. (They are embarrassingly naïve, on occasions I have forced myself to read some of it, but the cringing gets painful after a while.) I don’t know why I keep them, perhaps just to prove to myself how far I’ve come (and maybe I don’t read them all just in case I realise I haven’t come nearly far enough).
Anyway, I tried hard to work within specific pantheons, starting with the Greek, and then Roman, and then back to Greek. The Egyptian pantheon was next, driven by my obsession with all things Egypt as a small child. Then I tried the Norse gods - and pretty much got absolutely nothing. So for the next eight years I stagnated into working with “The God” and “The Goddess”, with occasional forages into specific archetypes (as they seemed to me) now and then. Any magic I did seemed very ineffectual.
In 2002 I was in a stinker of an abusive relationship. (Bear with me, this may look like another of my tangents, but there is a point to it.) One day in the August, the bastard had thrown me to the floor, beat on the side of my head with his fists and kicked me so hard in my left kidney I was left pissing blood for three days. Like many abused women, I had no control in the home over anything. I was the bread-winner; I had a really good job (a majorly, seriously, wonderful career) but he wanted more. His spending was out of control - but he was spending all MY money, running up debts in MY name. I finally started to make plans to leave him. He worked out what was going on, and turned on the charm. I wavered… and then, one last time, he showed his true colours. Fortunately he was too drunk to do much more than scream at me, and I barricaded myself into the spare room. As I sat there, in the cold (he’d spent the money I gave him for oil on fuck knows what else), in the beautiful converted barn I loved, I knew something had to change. And that’s when I heard my name called. Not in my head. Not from another room, but all around me. And again, and again. The voice was insistent, starting out full of sorrow, and sounding increasingly pissed off. I knew I was being spoken to by the Divine, and I knew precisely who it was.
The following morning, as I tried to creep out of the gothic arch oak door (honestly, this was my dream place, and I still can’t think about it without feeling a real pang), the bastard sat up on the sofa. “I’ll see YOU when you get home.”
He never did, because I never went back. Eventually the dust settled, and, with the help of friends, the company I worked for and my Grandfather, I rented a small terraced house and worked out a plan to deal with the debt he’d left me in. Selling my home cleared most of it; the last few thousand cleared by my redundancy payout I got when I lost my job ten months later. In that year, I had to move twice, lose the job I loved, get shafted by the Managing Director of the company I worked for, find another job (a fairly shit one, but it was all I could manage as I was teetering on the brink of a breakdown), get treated like a piece of crap by my boss, find my boss dead one morning (I don’t THINK I had anything to do with that, but you never know), work for his bloody partner (a total bitch) and listen to that bloody voice call my name every fucking time I had to make a hard decision or was facing major upheaval. I didn’t sleep beyond three or four hours a day. Things went a little weird. My life-long little OCD tendencies went into overdrive. Cleaning became an overwhelming obsession (and I lived in a house that shed brick dust and plaster everywhere like a cat sheds fur) and I couldn’t relax until every room was clean and tidy. And then I couldn’t relax anyway. I kept the television on every minute I was in that house, even when I was sleeping.
All the way through this, I continued some sort of eclectic, half-arsed Wicca. I developed decent Tarot skills. I tried finding all the love and light the fluffy bunnies spouted (I haunted the Mystic Wicks forum for hours, spouting copied invocations to Aphrodite, Diana, etc, and trying to give up doing my own Tarot readings as they invariably had The Tower, 9 and 10 of Swords and Death appear.)
And still the voice. Drowned out by the television, it started in my dreams. I could never find the source, but I’d be running down gothic torch-lit corridors of locked doors (and purple patterned carpets; still haven’t figured out the significance of purple patterned carpets) hearing my name being called over and over and over.
I knew who it was. But to me She was fucking scary, Queen of the Damned style scary. I knew Her name, I knew what little was written about Her in Bullfinch’s Mythology, and I knew only that most people saw Her as an old crone, harsh and malicious. But in the end I had to stop running, stop avoiding Her and take my childish fingers out of my ears and stop doing the “La la la la I’m not LISTENING” thing. I had to accept Hekate had an interest in me, and that she wasn’t about to take no for an answer.
The minute I did that, it was like a switch being thrown - my life turned around. I found a little home, I found the man that was eventually to become The Hubster and progenitor of The Witchlets, and I got my sleep back. Once I acknowledged Her, once I was back on the right path again, the way was smoothed. It would be another five years before I started working with Her, and another two years more before I began to honour Her in a way that has evolved into my relationship with Her now. Don’t get me wrong, life has been rocky in places these last (nearly) ten years, and She’s called my name in the same way a few more times, (once bringing me back from the brink of handing over Witchlet One to The Hubster and telling them they’d be better off without me and walking under a bus) but She has never, ever let me down.
She’s always been approachable, but we have a very specific relationship. I honour Her, I give Her offerings, I craft stuff I think She will approve of, I give money to an animal charity every month, and I petition Her when I am in great need. I occasionally ask Her to bless magical workings, but not THAT often. I have occasionally honoured other Greek deities with Her. It’s not that She’s stand-offish, or aloof, it’s just that we have set boundaries. She looks after me (fairly jealously, in the past), and I don’t race around nekkid having sex with The Hubster in front of Her shrine. (I wouldn’t call Her a prude, as SUCH - fuck me with a stick, I like living WAY too much to say that - but She’s not about to go all Dionysus on my arse.) All the mucky stuff (as the Hubster likes to call my herb, feather and bone-work) was purely witchcraft, not so much mixed with deity worship.
So the last thing I bloody expected was for her to invite a member of the Lwa into my life.
I’d started working with a land spirit in the local woods. He’s very powerful, has a right grumpy side to him (boy, was I made to feel VERY unwelcome the first time I explored his woods) but he’s softened up a lot since I’ve taken him offerings, and litter-picked every time I go. I started getting the impression there were two sides to him, as sometimes he could play tricks, laugh like a drain at me. Yeah, yeah, I didn’t get it. This was somebody else entirely. This was Papa Legba. In the end he had to go all typecast and BLACK at me before I got it (took an awful lot of ‘Yo, woman,’ and frankly unintelligible patois being whispered in my ear) but within a month or so I’d raided my Hallowe’en decorations for items for a shrine/altar for him.
I did have some doubts, of course. I mean, Hekate had pretty much prevented me from getting any involvement from any other deity, why on earth would She suddenly start inviting other metaphysical beings to come fuck with my sanity? I’m guessing that working with Hekate, a liminal Goddess that is a guide to the underworld, got Papa Legba’s attention (after all, he must be invoked before other spirits; he is the gatekeeper, so he has similar attributes to Hekate).
It didn’t end there. I’ve since been up close and personal with somebody else’s guardian angel, an Archangel, a dragon, the Queen of the fucking fairies for fucks sake and an ancient Witch. It can get kinda crowded in here.
Of course, I might be completely fucking nuts.
