Dark Moon Solstice

Usually I acknowledge the Winter Solstice by lighting a red candle at sunset that will burn through the night. Last night I needed to do something different because I also regularly acknowledge the Dark Moon and the two came together this year.

So instead of lighting a candle at sunset I waited until after midnight when the Solstice time had passed then turned off all lights and sat in the darkness for a long meditation on this dark time. Only after the time of the New Moon had also passed did I light a white candle and I waited until morning before lighting the red candle for the returning Sun.

I feel this is time for a new beginning and await guidance on where my path will take me and what the returning light will bring.

Invisibility

I want to be invisible. I want to go to the woods and be like a tree. So no-one can see me. Then I would be safe from people. There are other dangers I know. But I don't mind risking those. So I've been working on a spell of invisibility. So I can go out to the woods and dissolve into them and not be seen by other people.

I don't want to share the spell here, for that might make it not work. But I know I have to share some things and I don't think all other people are bad. So I come on here from time to time to be 'public', or visit other people's pages to see what they are doing. Here I'm not invisible but I'm in control of what I reveal and I feel that I can expose things safely. When I meet people face-to-face I am like that, always keeping  my secrets and staying safe. But also always looking for others  I might feel safe sharing secrets with. ......

So I went to the woods and I did the spell and sat near the path as still as a tree trying to be like an invisible dryad. Some people passed and ignored me. They receded and the wood spirits came closer. What I could see changed. I thought what other people saw of me also changed. I thought the spell worked. Then some more people came, a family with young children. A boy with a stick ran off the path towards me. I looked at him and he looked at me. Then he ran off. I think he saw me, but I wonder what he thought he had seen.

Coming Home

After writing what I did last time I have to say something different now. I walked out to a place that I used to go to a lot, but I haven't been there for a while. It's difficult to get to as it means quite a long walk along the forest track and then to scramble up a slope. But then there's a mossy hollow and a spring bubbling out of the ground. I never used to meet anyone coming up here but I think I felt discouraged from coming when some men in an off-road vehicle further down the track gave me a scare. They didn't do anything but the way they looked and laughed at something one of them said scared me. I wouldn't have stood a chance if they'd come after me. They shouldn't have been there anyway and I felt that the place had been violated, so I stayed away.

Today I felt called back there. I met no-one except a couple walking a dog at the beginning of the track. I got a bit scratched climbing up through the fern and bramble but once there I felt a deep peace almost like I could have curled up in the moss and dissolved into the place. I sat there for a long time watching the patches of sunlight filtering down through the trees. Then I went to the spring and spoke a spell of blessing. Afterwards there were tears in my eyes and I let one fall into the water.  It was overwhelming, like I was a lost daughter come back home. And I am.

Shadows

'All my bright uplooking
Is cast down'

I seem to have written that in my notebook about a year ago. But I don't know where it came from. Did I write it or copy it from somewhere? I don't know.

It's how I am though. After a couple of years of visions and openings I seem to have lost the sight. What was for a while a path to initiation taking me through the veil now seems just flat and ordinary. I still go out and look and see things that fill me with wonder and a feeling that I belong. But I can't see through them any more to what is beyond.

How could such a gift be granted me and then taken away?

The Game of Life

I'm back with this blog after many months. I'm not sure what I have to say to any possible reader? It was always more of a personal journal than a way of communicating with anyone. I'm deeply personal and inward looking and I'm my own best conversation partner. I know that sounds egotistic but I'm really not that full of my own importance. My feeling about myself, and my care for others, is that I should be humble. I hope I am. But my best society is the company of spirits in the forest and I find other humans difficult. Why? I get on OK when I 'play the game' which I can do well enough when I have to. But I'm so aware that is is a game. I'm really seeking something deeper than a game.

Maybe that's what I was doing on this blog - presenting myself as a witch. It's not that this wasn't genuine. I did need to express my personal sense of achieving initiation. I just started thinking too much about it. Words on a blog are not what counts but experience is what's important.

But still here I am writing words. So the game goes on ...