‘Ghosts Are Transparent’; Part Two, A Memoir [REPOST]

15/12/2020

Welcome, at last, to the much anticipated part two of my ‘Ghosts Are Transparent’ post… thing.

I do apologize for how long it took to get here, but I would like to say thank you to those of you who came back! The particular story I was telling… was dark. It was taking too much out of me to write it. So I’m leaving it be for now. I’m not ready to get into it and I’m respecting my own boundaries.

Healing doesn’t happen in a straight line, afterall. It is an ever spiraling cycle of highs and lows, good days and bad days, until you meet somewhere in the middle. I’m not at that point yet.

Perhaps one day I will delve into that story, because it is quite bizarre. However in this post, I wanted to just talk about my personal experience with the ‘supernatural’ and exactly what my flavor of spirituality is. Firstly, I have to say that I’ve always detested words like “super natural” and “paranormal” because, to paraphrase the Great Laurie Cabot, there is only natural and normal. So when I use words like that, please note that I am only doing so because I don’t have the vocabulary to describe such happenings to non-sensitive people.

I’ve been ‘psychic’ or ‘sensitive’ or whatever you want to call it pretty much my whole life. There have been times where it was less prevalent, on the back burner of my brain stove so to speak. However, it has always been there. Like a weird birthmark, or an extra toe… or dimples. It was something I was born with and while other judge it (or even fear it), it is something I am stuck with and therefore I have learned to love it.

From an outward perspective, I had quite an average childhood. We were quite poor, but I didn’t really want for anything. I had all I needed and I was happy. I was born to a wandering artist mother who, at one time, was rubbing elbows with the greats of the art world, like printmaker Mauricio Lasansky, and a punk father who had essentially raised himself. Besides my parents, my family consisted of my great grandparents (on my father’s side). While I wasn’t related to them by blood (my father was adopted), they were more my family than my mother’s siblings who quite quickly seemed to forget we existed.

Spiritually speaking, my family was quite openminded…. to say the least. While my extended family on my mother’s side was primarily Lutheran, and the extended family on my father’s side was primarily atheist/nonspiritual (save my grandparents), my household was quite a convergence of paths. My mother, who had been married to a Japanese man for nine years prior to my birth, was an avid Zan Buddhist. She introduced me to yoga, meditation, and many other concepts originating from the far East (albeit the were rather Westernized versions of these things, but she planted the seeds of deeper learning within me).

My father, who has always been quite enigmatic about his spirituality, was primarily Wiccan (with a Norse Pagan slant). Now, he never used the words “wiccan” or “witch” but I distinctly remember some particularly witchy themes in my childhood. Every day he would tell me stories about the old gods. He would bring me into the forest and make me listen to the trees and the animals speak. On more than one occasion we burned incense and left offerings to the Gods. While he played it down in some ways for me as a young child, the energy and significance was still there. I feel this was a vague attempt to keep me “normal”. I now know that behind closed doors, he was an avid practitioner though the depths of his practice I do not know. He eventually renounced his Gods (which is a story for another day) and refuses to speak about it.

Finally, my grandmother, who I credit for sewing the seeds of my spirituality was quite a strange woman. Strange in the best way possible. She was Indigenous American (I do not recall what tribal group she belonged to) and though she was an active member of her very Christian church, she was far more wilder and far more pagan than any of the other old biddies in her church choir. She found her Gods in the blooming Amaryllis Belladonna, the croaking toads in the forest creek beds, and the squirming Earth worms in the soft soil beneath her bare feet. My grandfather, her husband, I did not know as well. He had Alzheimer’s before I was born and I never knew him without the disease, though he loved fishing and working in his garden bed. Together, these two amazing humans showed me a simpler way of life, a way of life quite hidden away from the hustle and bustle of city life and soul crushing capitalism.

It was these three convergences of culture that built me into who I am today. This perfect trifecta of cultural conglomeration should come as no surprise to my friends who know me- and my spiritual path- well. I am, in every sense of the term, an eclectic witch. I essentially float through life, learning everything I can get my hands on and put into practice what I feel (and also what my Guides show me) to be right for me.

I began self identifying as a witch at the tender age of thirteen, which I am fairly certain I’ve mentioned in previous blog entries. It was rough at first. My mother was skeptical, but accepting. She wanted me to be happy, so as long as I wasn’t hurting myself or others she didn’t care what spirituality I followed (she opted to not have me baptized for this very reason). My father, on the other hand, was quite upset about my budding spirituality, despite him having a massive role in my spiritual development. This push back I experienced from him and later the school bullies is what made me be so vocal about my craft. Right from the get go, I’ve been loud and proud about it. In many ways, I regret that openness. However, I also feel it is my calling to be a bit of an educator on this subject one day, so I suppose it’s for the best. Too late to change it now anyways.

I began my practice as a pretty traditional Gardnerian Wiccan. I was first introduced to the word ‘Wicca’ in an episode of some ghost story show on the Discovery Channel, in which a woman who claimed to have practiced Wicca for a decade was attacked by mysterious spectral beings from beyond the veil. I was probably around seven or eight years old at this time and my young mind was captivated. Suddenly, I had a word for these feelings and urges I had to make potions and talk to trees. I suddenly had a word for the things my parents were teaching me. It all started to make sense. I initially began working with just the ‘Goddess” and “God” archetypes but later found myself being called to Kemetic Wicca/Kemetic Reconstructionism. For three years, I worked very closely with the Goddess Ubaste/Bastet. She was my first real deity connection I forged.

Its a strange and beautiful thing, working with deities. Their presence is so very real. In the case of Bast and I, she felt like a best friend. My connection to her was so strong and I felt her influence permeate every corner of my life. She was the perfect “beginning” Goddess for me, as she embodied this sort of lighthearted playfulness while also holding a deep and powerful magick. She was very protective of me and did not allow me to stray into the darker areas of Magick until I was ready.

Through Bastet’s guidance, I also began working with Thoth. What a guy, that Thoth. The first time I actually recall meeting Thoth was when I was still pretty green. I’d say he was the second deity that I formed a connection with, though others such as Isis and Osiris had also contacted me briefly by this point. You know when a new deity is reaching out to you when you get inexplicable urges, generally ones that feel uncharacteristic to yourself and usually relating to the deity. One particular night I was on my laptop, just minding my business, when I was struck by a powerful urge to write poetry. At this time in my life, I never wrote poetry, in fact I thought I hated poetry back then. I detested it. However on this night I could not control myself as I feverishly scribbled the words down as they poured forth from my psyche like a tidal wave. When I was finished, I had sat back in awe for a moment, dumbfounded by what had just happened.

“Thoth.” A voice from deep within me seemed to call out. It was quite a pivotal moment in my life. The poem in question has since been lost to the void of time, but I often think about that experience. As I grew older, however, I changed and with me changed my deities and my path.

I was around fifteen at this point and I was fully dedicated to my practice. My parents had split, so I was living with my mother full time, and I was also enrolled in homeschool so I was allowed to work my craft into my high school education. I meditated daily, sometimes for an hour or more at one time. I was quite powerful back then (perhaps too powerful), however I didn’t know my own strength and I was overconfident. I thought I knew everything. Typically fifteen year old shit, ya know? I would definitely say, however, that my abilities were stronger then than they are now in many ways, simply because of my youth. All I ever did in my free time when I wasn’t with my friends was study the occult and meditate in the woods.

Anyways, I digress. At this point in my life, I was regularly astral traveling and doing lots and lots of dream/astral related magick. I recall one particular meditation session Bast came to me and she said it was time for her to step back and let new deities in. She assured me that she would always be with me as a guide (and she is, still to this day, with me), but she expressed to me that she had taught me all should could at that time. It felt like a graduation of sorts.

In this vision, Bast lead me through a passageway that opened into a misty clearing in a dark forest. In the center of the clearing sat a campfire surrounded by the shapes of many men and women. Bast lead me to the fire and I sat down. Across from me, a grizzled man with one eye sat.

Odin. And to his right, Freyja. To his left, Loki. Behind them stood Bast and Thoth. They expressed to me that I was to go through a shift and begin working with Freyja and Loki; the same (or at least very similar) energy expressed in a different guise, a guise more closely related to my life at that time.

I was honored by this and took to it immediately. I still spoke often to Bast and Thoth, I kept them on my altar, I burned offerings to them and they remained, like proud spectral ‘parents’ cheering me on from the side lines.

Freyja, admittedly, was a little hard to keep up with at first. Like Bast, she embodied a sort of playful feline charm, but where she differed was in her... Firmness. Freyja was intimidating. She came about to welcome me into womanhood. She came into my life to teach me how to fight, while Bast taught me how to love. It was a difficult shift in mental framework. I was going through average teenage angst but also some issues with my mental health. I had developed something just short of an eating disorder. Orthorexia nervous, similar to Anorexia nervosa, this E.D. is characterized by restricting one’s food intake. However, for me, the goal was not only to be thin. Sure, being thin was a bonus to my E.D. brain, but my primary concern was with pure foods. I only wanted to put the purest and healthiest foods in my body. However, I didn’t know anything about eating healthy so I just went without eating. It was easier that way.

Now, Freyja is also a Goddess associated with fertility and crops and therefore, by association, fruits and vegetables as well. I feel like my Orthorexic tendencies stemmed a bit from her, however I will be the first to admit that I was headstrong at the time. I wasn’t listening to her and she was not happy about it, but she remained. There was always love between Freyja and I, but it was a tougher love than what I had felt with Bastet.

Loki, on the other hand, was a whole new ballgame. In Norse mythology, he is often times depicted as the Nordic version of Satan. Please get that idea out of your minds entirely. This is a concept that was somewhat introduced by Snorri Sturluson, a Christian man who transcribed the ancient stories of the Danes through a Christian lens. The ‘viking’ people sang their tales by word of mouth and only seemed to write down business transactions. The versions we know today are probably not entirely true to the original lore. I won’t disagree that Loki is not for the faint of heart. He’s a tricky devil, we can’t deny that.

However there is a sort of tenderness that came with Loki. To work with him was to experience such a deep intimacy and untouched wildness. Every second was an adventure. During this time, Loki would show me animals in the forest, he guided me in speaking with plants and animals. Through Loki I was able to work with Stolas briefly. I had so many magickal encounters with all manner of creatures, both spectral and real. Deer would approach me and follow me like dogs through the forest. Squirrels and birds would land amazingly close. Mere inches away. I would, of course, bring them snacks and in turn I was able to learn so much from interacting and connecting with all the beasts of the Earth. At this time I had developed a rather strong affiliation with the Sidhe (the faeries) as well.

However, as is natural with teen girls, I became obsessed with acquiring a boyfriend. I dated a little bit in high school, but I felt at the time that high school boys were beneath me. After many a failed attempt at wooing older boys and seeing my friends acquiring boyfriends, I decided it was time to use magick to, ehrm, expedite the process.

Don’t /ever/ ask Loki to help you with a love spell. Just. Don’t. I am not willing to get into this chapter of my life in great detail, as this is a very dark time in my life. As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, I’m just not ready to discuss it. Perhaps one day, but not today. However, I will tell you that my wild and passionate love affair with Loki, coupled with my strained but strong bond of sisterhood with Freyja created a perfect storm of bad romance.

It was during this time, I was not allowed to practice my craft. I still prayed often and spoke to my gods and goddesses in silence. The abuser may take the ability to do. They may take your tools, desecrate your altars, but they can never touch the altar within you. However during this time, my connection was severed. Soon Loki was the only deity that would interact. The Sidhe left, the deer stopped visiting. My life lost all magick for a very long time.

In fact, it was only just recently that I have been able to reestablish similar connections with the deities that I had prior to the abuse I endured. Through the help and guidance of my ancestral spirits, I’ve been able to reform my connection with Thoth.

I could probably go on longer about my connections to deities and my experience working with them. I have really only just scratched the surface here. However, I feel like my posts can get quite long and I don’t want to overload you, dear reader. I would love to delve more into deity and spirit work in a later post.

I am finally at a point in my life where I can continue this great work and I must say it is quite liberating. I am not the type to just casually commit to something. Witchcraft is my entire being and it is all that I do. I am excited to see where this new journey takes me.

Thank you all for reading. I’m assuming people are reading my blogs. I don’t really care if people are reading or not, though. I just enjoy writing these posts.