Oct. 31st, 2017. 6 pm. Sun, Mercury and Jupiter in Scorpio, Moon in Pisces, Venus and Mars in Libra, Saturn in Sagittarius
The waning sunlight signals the descent.
Starlight, torches, candles, flashlights, cell phones, phosphorous lights our way as we pick tenuous steps out of the inky black.
She Opens.
The warm, wet, hot, dry, hard, cold Earth Opens.
We step down like we are disintegrating.
Like we are lying down for naps infinite.
Crushed by the intimacy of soil, roots, boulders.
Gently encouraged, neverending gentle encouragement to merely go soft, sag, melt into puddles of decaying meat and forgotten synapse.
Oh right, the brain, the muscle of character, gone slack as the ego, loosed of its conceptual responsibilities, shuffles off itself from itself, like a skinsuit.
Your gender, your race, your stuff, your dreams, your values, melting out of the architecture of you into the sea of infinite human expression, itself, a blip in the expression of the universal life force.
Swoosh, goes the sickle, cutting off your head.
And another version of your truth surges forth out of the Earth, out of Materia, golden, righteous, everlasting.
So much potential.
The tremendous curved blade of time, swinging, back and forth and
I’m trying to relate to you.
I’m trying to find a place for this force in my life.
But you take everything.
You change everything.
I build my altar, here in the Kali Yuga, the era of Destruction and Chaos.
Spilled blood red. Burnt bone black. Ice white. The bruisy blue-purple of death. The green of mold. The yellow of infection. The grey of disappointment
I burn Jasmine; I burn Dragon’s Blood; I burn Yew. I burn parchment etched with the words of those things I am ending.
Come Hecate. Come Hel. Come Morrigan.
Samhain is the Third Harvest, the Last Harvest.
Before the darkness of Winter comes and brings the land to stillness.
What have I reaped this year?
Have I done enough?
Is this all I get?
You are empty-eyed skull.
You are spinning black hole.
You are wave’s edge, slowly, eternally, eroding the stone.
I hold up my hands
Please, wait-
Swoosh.
I am golden and glorious, crowned and conquering child of the new eon.
I am feral, prancing child of dawn, naked skin glittering with dew, lusting for life.
I am come to bring peace to all beings.
I am full with the abundance of love.
I am radiant center of benevolent power and protection.
Swoosh.
I am Guru.
I am Despot.
I am Slave, bare feet walking the path before me.
Swoosh.
Now I am a Sailor.
Swoosh.
Now I am a Spy.
Swoosh.
Now I am a Baker,
Swoosh.
Baking blackbirds in a pie.
Swoosh.
Wipe the dust from your eyes.
Arise, arise.
We fell asleep among the cypress, the atlas cedars.
What a strange dream.
I feel an odd chill in my bones,
Like someone has crossed my grave.
A repeating current in me, like I’ve been swimming.
But see here, our cups are still half full,
The fire still burns, and the fiddler still plays!
Why be so glum and number our days?
Even yet, the Sun begins to rise.
I feel like I’ve said all this before, but of course not.
The infinite now is all that we’ve got.
-Meagan Angus, Witch