Grimoire: Sacred Space

Photo by Anastasia Shuraeva on Pexels.com

What if

The deep hunger for emptiness

The torturous aims to achieve

Were the only ways she knew

To create space for herself, within herself

The only way

To approximate a clearing of the maelstrom

Energies

Voices

Visions

Ancestral beggings

Unaligned cords and commitments

His energy

Swirling like a tangle of poison

A burden, forced to carry

In her pit

What if

This was the only way she knew

To feel clear?

What if

Releasing cellular matter

Kilo by kilo

Actually felt like releasing

Old imprinted matter

That no longer serves?

Matter she had no choice to receive

Mother, her energy

Her energy

What if

She could create

An equally powerful tool

To clear, to clean, to build

Space

Without destruction

To create

Space

Without suffering

To create

Space

For her full, joyous being

Kicking those freeloaders out of the window

To let in the light

To take up root and grow

Large

She only knew

The tool of going without

She only knew

The feeling of nothing

Hovering in her stomach

As a sort of power

To claim her space

But ironically

This tool, precisely applied

Only destroyed her

What if, instead

She poured her obsessive, meticulous

Attention

On magick

On psychic realm protections

On creating shimmering boundary

Crafting space

Space

For the altars–

The Dark Goddess Altar

The Inner Child Altar

The Altar of the Shadowy realms, exalted

Occupying her hands

And her minutes

And her mind

With teachings

And community

And reminders

That her body is not broken

And that she is not confused

And that this roiling mass within her

Does not belong,

And that she has the power to clear it

To claim her own space

To tend her own altars

To make room for the brilliance of life

Urging to live through her in Beauty

What if, instead

Of arranging every single molecule

Every single gram, second, kilo

To somehow engender the feeling

Of the deep, deep certain emptiness of hunger

What if, instead

She occupied magician’s mind

Throwing down pathwork

Fighting valiantly for

The creation of true space

Sacred space

Defending

An incomparable

Uniqueness

A remarkable

Glistening starlight

A temple, lined with offerings

Her sacred space

Her

Sacred

Space

Of Skin

Grimoire: Bone Magic

Something a little different this week, my friends! Here is an excerpt from the semi-fictional grimoire in my upcoming novel, The Kitchen Witch. Enjoy!

BONE MAGIC: HONORING THE LOVE OF BONES

There is a particular fondness for bones amongst many with eating difficulties, mostly in seeing them jut out from oneself as proof of ultimate thinness. While glorifying thin bodies is obviously a twisted carryover from our fashion worlds, I also feel it has more sacred roots.

In many cultures around the world, there is what is known as the Crone figure. This has often been portrayed as the ugly, wicked old woman in the forest in our contemporary times. However, in other cultures this archetype held great power and respect rather than disgust. The Crone symbolized facing death, destruction and the dying of the old to make room for the new. Many stories described her, sitting by a fire, throwing sticks and stones for divination, her countenance adorned with various feathers and skeletal pieces from animals. She was also often skeletal looking, not for fashion’s sake, but to depict one on the edge of life and death, working with those mysteries.

The Crone worked with death, strove to understand it. Her bones, both protruding from her body and adorning her body, represented this connection, this acceptance of this great Mystery of our experience as humans.

The Crone honored the bones. I’d like to propose that one struggling with a restrictive eating disorder, who spends so much effort in looking for, searching for her bones, is a Crone in hiding. I propose she is not looking for thinness for the sake of being thin, but that she is searching for this Crone within her, to see its evidence within her and the collective psyche. She does not know it, but if she survives the initiation, she will become the Crone.

So, in honor of the Crone, in honor of our searching, starving, scratching, and seeking her to reveal herself through our skin, I present this chapter. It outlines some ways to take this love of bones, and this yearning for Crone, and to embrace it, create with it, learn from it in life-giving ways. That instead of twisting this deep yearning into a practice that is literally killing off the potential to honor the Crone’s wisdom, instead we will embrace it.

Grimoire: Start Where You Are

“But what about the food?”

The young girl asked

The old, wise eyes gazing back upon her

“All of these philosophical waxings

All of this spiritual idealism

But what

About

The

Food??

I’ve talked too long

And thought too much

And tried my best

To daydream of better days

Beyond the constant need to measure

Beyond the fear of eating different foods

Beyond the rituals, the timings, the incessant hopelessness

That I’ll never be free

But I can’t see

I can’t see beyond

This cage

What

About

That?!?”

The old woman smiled through the bars

Deep compassion and a wry spice, wrinkling

She took a breath, and said

“Start where you are, dearie

That’s howcome you can’t see out

You must

Start inside

“Start inside, blessing all the furniture

That makes up this sacred mind-home

Although it is a cage

It has, after all

Kept you very safe.”

Peppered braid moved across shoulder

As she looked out to field

“If you measure, bless those cups

If you weigh, bless that scale

If you time-tick, give offerings to the sacredness of Chronos

If you eat the same thing

Every single day

Scour the grimoires

For the enchanting qualities of these foods

See where they are speaking magic

To you

Stir clockwise

Prayers for freedom, release

Into the liquids you can consume

Carve spells for change, vision

Across the same, hard bar

You consume over and over again

Like the slaves in deep dark territory

Rolling cigars with dirt and leaves for Legba

Start…

Where you are.”

The girl looked at the woman

Who stared out to the field

Girl-mouth agape

And devouring

The words she never knew

She needed to hear

Those blasphemous and wild

Life-giving, not enabling

Trickster words

“Start

Where you are”

And so,

She retreated from the small opening

That looked out to the woman

And her eyes, and her smile, and her

Spice

She turned and looked around

At the blank and dismal walls

Of her tiny, tiny world

She lit a candle

Holding it up to it all

And start

She did

Grimoire: Coven

Wandering for decades

Through the murky bogs of normality

Yearning, keening, comparing

Kicking, screaming, wailing

Reducing, rebelling

To find my place in it all

Somehow I’ve arrived

At the Order of The Zig Zag Path

Wolf-like, growling

Strange wings, cawing

Occasional hands

Have dared touch my flesh

Steering, holding, guiding

The realness of them, shocking

They lift me

Then

They are gone

Loosely, we are networked

By a fine, gossamer thread

A webbing, worldwide

A simple tug (I have to ask)

Will bring these hands

To mine in times of need

Many years I’ve travelled

And lines of insanity I’ve toed

Wandering far from this web

Withering, dissolving, slobbering

Blade in hand, at the ready

When always, they are there

It’s taken half a century

To see

That without this web

That without this

Coven

I would never have made it

As odd birds cannot fly to safety

Alone

There is always a wind

There is always a strange rising that guides them

There is always

Another

Without this,

Chilling winters

Turn beating hearts to stone

We need bodies

We need circling

We need

Support

Especially those called

To walk the edges

To take study in risky hedges

To turn the different Way

We need

Coven

Coven may sound

Like some fantastical irrational

Dreaming

And in part, we are

But this webbing also includes

The real rays of diagnostic

The trained elders guiding mind

The white walls of safe places

When blood may come

From our own hands

These too

Are Coven

For those who have been called to

(Most likely kicking and screaming)

The Order of The Zig Zag Path

Cannot do this

Alone

We have both rational, hard structure

And spirit guided deep wildness

To weave as we navigate the road

Where nothing is normal

Where pain cannot be dissected and removed

Where reoccurring trials of the flesh

Are seen as lessons, and gods, and great

Rootlets winding through ancient futures

This

Without Coven

The mind, in the stew of normality

Will be torn, reduced, tamed

Confused, anesthetized

Until our wild eyes and hearts

That know The Way

Expire in the freezing snow

Odd birds cannot fly to safety

Alone

There is always a wind

There is always a strange rising that guides them

There is always

Another

Without this,

This Coven

Mass hysterical illusions

Those chilling winters

Will

Turn our beating hearts

To stone

Find the webbing, dear one

Tug it

Let yourself

Be held

And diagnosed

And nurtured

And guided

And re-membered

And dissolved

By the straight numbers and the tests

Keeping your shining organs alive

And by the very, very strange ones

The ones you know

Let yourself land here

In Coven

Not

Alone

Featured

The Kitchen Witch’s Way Moves Ahead!

for those of you who don’t know, i am working on a magical realism trilogy called The Kitchen Witch’s Way. this mystical romp is a tale centered around a skeptical young woman, her run-ins with a rascally kitchen witch and her encounters with the grimoire that rewrites everything she’s been programmed to believe about her challenging relationship with food and her body.

there’s some peeks into the actual grimoire matter throughout the series with an eventual goal of releasing the full grimoire as a separate text. plus, it’s cottage-core! the witch’s cabin in the woods, the blossoming herb gardens, and the town setting complete with a tarot-reader’s bohemian caravan, black cat familiars and the town’s happening cafe and music venue, The Bitter End are just a few of the reasons you might want to spend some time in this world. i’m still working on my elevator pitch so judge me if you will but that’s the current jist :}

i am writing here today to share my excitement about having just hired and put in my first deposit for a developmental editor for the first book in the series! they’re all basically written, but this is only the beginning of the trail. i’m not entirely sure how i will finance the entire journey but putting the magick into the pot of possibilities and seeing what happens.

i am working on a Kickstarter campaign and will share those links once the book is actually road-worthy of such things for those who may be interested. a collection of some of the poems i’ve shared here may show up as a gift for supporters. it is honestly a bit overwhelming all the little ins and out of the journey but as always micro-goals are my friend.

it is a long road to self-publishing (see developmental editing stage in the oldie-but-goodie graphic below) but this trilogy is definitely one of my life/death goals and i will pursue it to the ends. stay tuned and thanks for being with me on the ride! ~raVen

~Grimoire~

Photo by RODNAE Productions on Pexels.com

Like the smooth skin

Of the blind finger

Feeling it’s way to the message

So it is with The Grimoire

All she can do

Is imagine its thick leather surface

Rippled with gold foil

Balancing its heft

Upon palms of outstretched arm

In center of mind’s eye

All she can do is pull it in close

And take in the spectral aroma

Of woodsmoke and incense

Visioning what

Struggles and twists to become

Such a troubled birthing this has been

Starts and fits and ends

Over and over, trying to complete

Over and over, attempting to download

Conceive

The message

Too large, whipping with tendrils

Of eons and voices and symbol

She can’t even comprehend

Messages

From long ago

This pen and paper attempting

As lightning rod

For a thousand hungry-ghost cloud

Looming, circling, beating

Yearning

To enter,

Yearning

To tell

Wishes

Of hoping

Pleading

Final release

Many lifetimes

Many medicines

Many…evils?

They clamber

Vying for one electric stream

Attempting in such capacity

To fit into one tiny arm

It shakes, it aches

And mind trembles

Finally collapsing

Into blankness

Again

Squeezing her Will

Under quivering hand

She feels, faintly

A loose form

Starting to rise

Again

Perhaps, today

Again

Somehow it will embody

Those gilded edges

That smoke-blessed page

Perhaps, today

Again

It will make it through

But, she shudders

What be its cost, madness?

The price of birth, death?

Will body frame crumble

Leaving only book behind

Switching place of essence

Book to form, scribe to wind?

Only these types of questions

Soothe her while she stares at blank page

That such a channeling

Is really of grand importance

That only gods and demons and

Threats of death and annihilation

That only the battles of all lifetimes

And the resistance to Sacrifice

Again

Can explain