this is NOT the woman i met, it is a stock Photo by Yulia Rozanova on Pexels.com
It seems I often dream of eastern/Asian symbology when something new is coming to form in my life, yet recently the symbols manifested in my *waking* dream.
An Asian elder came into the apothecary I work in, and we were dialoguing about her symptoms…lo and behold she was dealing with *exactly* the same pain symptoms I have recently been struggling to manage.
She and I recognized the specific nature of the synchronicity and smiled at each other.
She told me about a particular herbal formula that she’d been directed to use by her medicine people, her great trust in that process…and then she left.
Hours later as I was closing up the shoppe, this real/dream elder came back, a bag of strange and mysterious herbs in hand. She told me to decoct the mixture and that we could share about how it was working for both of us.
This is not a totally unusual experience at the apothecary portal, but a beauteous and magickal one nonetheless. I haven’t seen the woman since then. I kind of wonder if I ever will. I kind of wonder if she was real, or if she was a cross-over dream character giving me direction when I most needed it.
Who knows? The line between the waking and sleeping dream has long been hazy for me. All I can say is blessed be to the dream teachers, and to this particular elder that shared so presently with me. I have hopes for how the decoction alchemizes inside
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Thanks for reading! I am deciding to vary my consistent poetry structure to include some prose, I would love to know if you’d like to have just poetry or if this is a welcome change?
“The young maid stole through the cottage door, And blushed as she sought the plant of power. ‘Thou silver glow-worm, oh! lend me thy light, I must gather the mystic St. John’s Wort to-night…'”
This week’s adventure took me to a local Italian restaurant under the redwoods. Here I aimed to re-create the memory of boyfriend #2 and I sharing a meal of fries and beer during joyous college years. As I have in the past posts, I will begin with the magical qualities of these food gifts.
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Beer: Earth, home, family, prosperity, protection. Often noted as being used in ancient ritual offerings.
Potatoes: Grounding, survival, protection, stability, root chakra
Salt: Protection, cleansing
Garlic: Protection, banishing, warding.
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How interesting that these foods/drink go so well together…it is like the perfect protection spell ritual! And as an agnostic, one I’m much more drawn to than chanting over laden altars and such :}
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I remember the original experience, having another person to focus my energies on and enjoy with…made for a magical thing. We had no idea about magical uses of food at the time, nor the ritual uses and origins of the foods we were eating—but riding high on the fumes of love and carefree college life, mixed together with a noisy brewery were magic enough.
But even though I was alone this time, I found myself oddly at home and enjoying nonetheless. After the initial anxiety of fending off psychic question marks of others for being solitary in my dining, I settled into a corner table with my book and journal. I had just been on an epic hike full of glorious spring plant friend relating, and imagined myself a lone herbal healer having come upon a dusky tavern at the end of her travels for the day. It didn’t take long for a server to arrive with my frosty brew and with a few sips I let myself be in the moment of sounds, tastes, and the gift of being alive and able to enjoy such pleasures. The kindness and unexpected repeated greeting of “Bella!” made me feel as if the whole restaurant was alive with intimacy of which with I was intermingled. I imagined the old, knarled roots of the redwoods surrounding the dining area to be part of that.
At home after the experience, I went to my journal and drew. While the feelings of anxiety and the recognition of the empty seat across from me in this re-creation showed up, so did the joy and connectedness I felt in the atmosphere. I also noted my sense of grounding, and perhaps protectedness, that was felt during the meal. I did have some frustration appear in red marks, around my dislike of this lingering wondering about whether my stomach would be hurting as a result of veering into beer and fries land. The jagged marks of the frustration of still caring, after all this work and all these years…of not wanting to care so much about food’s effect on me.
I decided to set myself up with a documentary to whittle the next few hours away, to occupy my brain that was trying to use precious space to fret about these things. Somehow I ended up on a Metallica documentary, and for many reasons found myself feeling like this was a perfect end to a perfect day, a Bella giornata :}
*Thanks for reading! Join me next week as I re-create the next food memory, “Trail Mix.”
**If you’d like to learn more about the Food Memories book I am referencing for these posts, you can support a small bookstore by purchasing it here:
This week’s memory brings me back to part of my original intention of these food memory re-enactments…to introduce magickal correspondences into the meals that once were laced with trauma, and to re-experience them with a new energy. I’ve been a bit lax in my last few posts on this point, and I’m glad to be back to it.
First, let us jump to the supposed magickal/ceremonial qualities of this re-imagined gruel:
Owl: The traditional meaning of the owl spirit animal is the announcer of death, most likely symbolic like a life transition, change
Oatmeal: Used to invoke or worship Brighid. Brighid’s invention of keening, a lament for the dead, reflected her status as a goddess of life and death. Brigid also protected cemeteries, which can be found at many of her holy sites
Apples: Considered the food of the dead, use as an offering to appease the Gods of ancestors, the Underworld, and life/death crossroad guards. Also called “Fruit of the Underworld.”
Cinnamon: Use to raise spiritual and protective vibrations, draw money, and stimulate psychic powers.
Sugar: Use to attract object of desire…even if it is death. Skulls made of sugar are said to attract the souls of the dead to eat them in Dia De Los Muertes ceremonies.
Water: Cleansing, clearing.
This was a different way to view Quaker oats for sure!
What brought me back to wondering about the magickal properties of the meal? It was the experience of being woken up by hunger in the middle of the night, choosing to make and eat this meal to follow that hunger, and upon sitting down to take it in, realizing that not only was I eating under a full moon but also a loud hooting Owl outside my window. The setting was so haunting, so quiet and deep, it made me wonder about the significance of the items of this meal I restricted so long ago, as well as why the owl decided to show up so powerfully during my experience.
What I found, and thought about whilst eating, was very interesting. As I tried to recreate the slurping, agonizingly slow pace of eating that once I undertook, I was lulled by the Owl. This sound, this animal, was my deepener.
Its presence reminded me of its reputation as the gatekeeper to the death realms, the Underworld, the psychic realms. Its hooting drew me into reminiscence of the cold fall morning where I sat in front of the heater, shivering, body shrinking from my sad aims of chasing Thanatos over the summer. I remember sitting in front of that bowl of overly watered-down oatmeal, battling myself, wondering what the hell I was doing on the planet anymore, of my aims to leave. I remember battling with that oatmeal, and my waning appetite, pushing it away after a few feeble attempts to reverse my trajectory.
So Owl showing up now, here in the blackness, so many years later, and my hunger, roaring, was very curious. My meaning making mind wanted to understand the layers of things I was experiencing as I ate this similarly watered-down oatmeal under its echoing call, under the light of the bright orb in the sky. But I couldn’t, I just let it move me, feeling into the depths of this recreated grief-laced memory.
As in the last few posts, in the original memory I was grieving the loss of him, this tragic death of a friend. But I was also grieving the loss of my youth, the loss of my hope for any kind of consciousness to come through my mother, drowning as she was in her own loneliness, sorrow and gin. I was grieving at the sorry state of the world and what lie before me, with no role models to show me the way, with no elders to help me understand the intensity of what I was feeling, and doing to myself. What was this something, so much more powerful than I, pulling me under, drowning me, too? Why did I want nothing more than to die?
This time, I finished the oatmeal, pondering these deep thoughts. I lifted a hefty dollop of glistening almond butter to my mouth, allowing its savory nutty goodness to disperse across my senses and to provide more sustenance than that day. I let the experience simmer within me.
That evening, I did some art–of the Owl, of the emotions of that adolescent. And then I went into the research, finding that much of the things that made up this meal were in some way or form used as offerings to appease the dead, as you saw in the above descriptions.
And that cold fall, I was headed into the last serious stages of restriction, before I’d shortly be admitted to the hospital. I was headed…into death. And there was part of me that wondered, if on some mythological, soul level, if I left that bowl filled with these ancient ceremonial items…for the lords of the Death realms I was about to enter. I imagined myself pushing the bowl not away from myself, but towards Her, that Dark Goddess I was in some way courting. I think this same thing for a lot of shadowy, shame-laced behavior…is it really an attempt by the soul at some sense of the sacred? I let that possibility exist, re-imagining her, on that day, making a sacred offering for the hell of what she was about to enter.
So all of this came forward with that seemingly simple bowl of gruel. These food memory re-creations continue to amaze me in what they bring forward. I am so grateful to have a place to play and share about them here, and also…for your eyes. I realize I am making a hell of a lot out of a bowl of oatmeal, but such is my right in the realms of imagination and writing. I do hope you enjoyed this week’s ponderings :}
*Join me next week for the next food memory: “Ensure.”
**If you’d like to learn more about the Food Memories book I am referencing for these posts, you can support a small bookstore by purchasing it here:
Letting Go 