My Magic x

I am standing in a room that has belonged to many humans before me. Their names have been sent in letter form to the mailbox at the front of the building. Names that whisper of ethnicity, mythology, and hope. I like reading their names and yet I am frustrated at the amount of ridiculous mail we are receiving that these ex-residents have never cancelled. I have lived in this new-to-me place for 6 weeks. Kit and I moved here on the day of the Autumn Equinox, three years after spying each other - sharing looks and life-force - on a boat filled with writhing, proud, sensuous bodies of queerness and colour. That day was also exactly the Autumn Equinox.
I am standing in a magical circle that I cast by my hand, grasping a double-edged knife. When I was younger and abiding by Wiccan terms due to the books I had access to and what some named Wiccanate privilege for a few laughable years - I would just say Wiccan conceptual predominance perhaps - I called this knife an athame. I haven’t called my knife an athame for many years. The term made no sense to me anymore. And yet at the beginning of this ritual I began to speak aloud - an act of ritualistic and sorcerous identification with the Goddess Herself or a specific Goddess-Mystery - the latter half of the the Charge of the Goddess, born out of what later came to be called the Gardnerian Tradition. Versions of this Charge have been published in books for decades. Books like A Witches’ Bible by Janet and Stewart Farrar which I read intensively as a teen, although I never once tried to practise the rituals that were painstakingly described in that book. That was not the Craft that was emotionally calling me. And yet - here I am drawing inspiration and poetry from that the Charge, because I find these words meaningful and beautiful. They also form a strong part of the magic infusing the Reclaiming Tradition that I teach and learn in.
My room is crowded with shrines, as my bedrooms often are. Luckily for me there is a non-functional and stunning fireplace in the centre of my room, at the southern wall. This is fortunate because I anchor and begin my magical circles in the south. In the hemisphere I live in, this is the direction of midnight, darkness, and the nearest magnetic pole. So really, this is our ‘north’ because that is the nature of the ‘north’. All begins in darkness and all dissolves back into darkness, and so this is where my compass is oriented and my circle begins to be cast.

When I first knelt down - before I took the knife - I began a fourfold, square breath-cycle that I learnt from my beloved and a teacher and initiator of mine in the Craft, Lee Morgan. He taught me that I could breathe in the green, hold that in-breath to receive and remember the white fire of stars and angels, breathe out the redness of my animal truth, and be held by what I like to call the death-breath, when I meditate on the blackness ‘below’ me, of the Underworld. This was something Lee taught me that sometimes I pass to others, always remembering to honour my teacher and name him. To orient people to lineage is important in the story-telling of our Craft. For me lineage means intimacy, relationship, and the context of how things are shared and connected, how things are a part of one another.
I do this breathing spell to honour, orient, and merge with what Lee - when teaching me this - called the four realms. When I brought this mindfully into the Wildwood Craft as it resonated with our body of lore and cosmology I named it the four kin, or the compass kin as we specifically orient to it via the airts (winds and directions) of the compass already. And we already called the land, sky, and sea the three realms. I did not want to confuse anyone. I remember - I am breathing for myself and my connection to the Kin.

I then spoke those aforementioned words from the Charge, not only to reach out to the Mystery I call the Goddess, but to dissolve my edges into the sacred immanence of Her, into the ground of being. I begin to share in the Power that witches know instinctively how to sense, evoke, raise, empower, direct, and release.
I then took my knife and I breathed over it. What I breathed over it is for me to know. But realistically it could be anything that means, here is the power of a knife and this is magic and I am about to begin! I have cast circles with knives since I was an adolescent, but originally I cast circles with wands because that is what one of my first books instructed me to do. It felt more natural to me at the time. I grew up with ancient and venerable ceremonial knives around me as, in cultures of the Malay-Indo-Philippino archipelago, the kris is a desirable and powerful weapon, ward, and witching device! My father keeps and takes care of several. They are deeply significant in Balinese culture. For this reason it took me a few years to ‘grok’ (haha, Church of All Worlds, another story!) the witch’s knife. There is a line in some published version of so-called Gardnerian initiation rituals which indicates the witch being brought in must reply - with a knife in my hair - to the initiator. And upon that knife will she swear the oath. Well, who knows if this is from some native British witch tradition - and really, it well could be - but apparently it also evokes stories of Javanese women who keep knives in their hair to defend from rapacious attackers, who in patriarchal worlds, are plentiful and often pardoned.

And so with that knife I began in the south, or my ‘north’. Eat it. (I do know witches who cast their circles clockwise in the southern hemisphere and they have sound rationales for that and both ways with their accompanied reasonings work!). I carve a flaming five point star - a hallowed pentagram - in the south. This is an ancient icon of protection and invocation. It exists and is utilised in innumerable occult and magical traditions throughout Europe and Mesopotamia. The story often told is that modern witches get this “pentagram-in-direction-cutting-the-air” from the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn’s lesser banishing ritual of the pentagram. And it works and is useful, and if this is so - wondrous! We also inherit a lot of occult Tarot from their members as well. I don’t know what those British occultists were doing in the Victorian era with their pentagrams, but I do the pentagram appears in Welsh and German cunning folk and magical protection rituals as well. I did practice the lesser banishing ritual of the pentagram as a teen witch. It hasn’t been a part of my life since then. I cast the pentagrams as wards around my circle because they help to protect me from danger coming from that direction. They also open a portal to specific spirits who I want to spend time with in that place and time.
I speak words that came through Victor Anderson. They are published and there is no secret here, except the deep ones.

By the earth that is her fertile body.

Let’s pause and consider the gravitas of this poetry. Feri witches - most of us anyway - begin one of the most important and sacred rituals to us by honouring the earth who is the Goddess as fertile body. And upon this knowing, it all shall rest.
I turn in the way of the sun, we name this by an old Irish term (still used), deiseal, or a lot of us spell it deosil because *reasons*, and again in my hemisphere that means anticlockwise. Eat it. You see travelling in the way of the sun is what the folks were interested in, it blesses/sains a space you see. One can go anticlockwise in either hemisphere for other magical reasons too, of course. There are also traditional and folk witches I have met in the northern hemisphere who move anticlockwise to either set up their working space or sink into the Underworld or journey into the Otherworld. One could say to turn against the sun, or to flip the script of the people, is perhaps the witchiest thing.
I face the east, direction where the sun rises and I say,

By the air the is her vital breath.

I turn to the north and the west and back to the south, each time with simple poetry about the Elements and the Great Goddess. If I didn’t return to the south there would be no complete circle, please consider that lovely ones. I have watched too many people not complete the circuit. Oops.
And then I gesture above and below. My knife traces all kinds of signs and shapes. I have for years sealed these kinds of circles with these words,

The circle is cast and we are between the worlds and what happens between the worlds changed all the worlds.

This is a Reclaiming tradition and I learnt it from them-us. And those words at the end there are in direct response (protest even, haha Reclaiming) to other witches in the 60s and 70s in the Bay Area - and elsewhere - who were incanting,

“Does not concern the world…”

Hmmm, thought my Reclaiming mothers and grandmothers - of several genders mind you - no thanks, we are eco-feminist immanentists! We want our magic to affect ALL THE WORLDS.
And so it is. Much more magically potent and effective in my mind and heart.
If I was in a group of Wildwood witches right now, or if I was enacting a specifically Wildwood ritual within that tradition’s context and poetry these words would make sense, but far more commonly and traditional to us is to say (oh and we don’t draw pentagrams in directions when we cast circles you see),

As above, so below, to and from us all things flow.

I learnt these words from a witch named Deborah when I was in high school and we shared a coven together. She was a little older than me and had instruction from a few adult practitioners, one or two were uh… not good. The provenance could be anything really, including her own genius. I often think of one of her teachers specifically who rhymed similarly in ritual, in fact I wonder if once I heard her say it herself at a Lughnasadh ritual… a Druid priestess who was the talk of her small country town. She was self-possessed and owned her sexuality you see. And a divorced woman with sons! Gasp!
Often witches invoke from the directions - or orient through the compass-points - to great powers, mysteries, or realms. On this day I had been casting with Feri poetry and so I - for the first time in months - named and invoked the Feri Guardians of the six directions. With great power they appeared to me. Their names, forms, and shapes are deeply honoured and cherished landscapes of lore for us. And so I will not comment on them here. They bring great power to the Circle, making my Circle now a telescope by which I may perceive the Gods and the Circle is now a lens for Them to perceive me. Here we are, together.
Before I continue I draw more power and relate intimately to great mysteries that make and re-make me by incanting fiercely what is often called the Wildwood Call. I incant it with my arms crossing and my hands reaching out to clasp my beloveds’ hands, human and more-than-human. This opens me to the primordial witches otherworld, the great forest, the Wildwood. 

I light incense that is specifically blended - for different deities to whom I am sworn - by skilful hands from across the Pacific.
First to Our Lady of the Wildwood, then to Persephone, then to Kali Maa. Then I begin to invoke and name the Others. Soon I remember my room is throbbing with shrines and it would be deeply rude of me to not acknowledge them all.
So with the light of certain candles I light up my ancestor shrine, and with certain incense and plants I offer compelling smoke to my newly-created shrine to Woden and Freya. These two Great Ones have been in my life for years, but I haven’t always made conscious space for them. They both have a great sense of humour about this and remind me often that they are here for me. I have had profound and intimate experiences with them both together and separately. I am reminded that the Elder Futhark Runes were there first divination system I ever began to consciously learn. I still remember the small book I borrowed from the library. I sat on my mother’s bed reading excitedly to her and I remember her leaning in with interest. There have been several times in which both Odin and Freya have reached out in the way other Gods have, to claim me so to speak. Many witches, pagans, and mystics will understand this experience. It is daunting to say the least, exhilarating too of course.
Next to that shrine - on the exact same surface but distinctly apart - is my Hindu shrine, but to call it that strikes always strikes me as reductive. I don’t know what else to call it. In some ways that is its cultural-historical context, I guess? In other ways these are the Gods of my father and his people and their culture and the Gods who were around me and my family since I can remember. To not keep a shrine to these Great Mysteries would feel hurtful to me. Who am I truly, without them? And so here I am incanting Maa and Devi and making mudras with my hands and then singing the Gayatri Mantra three times. I look tenderly at the icons I have of Ganesha (at least three here), Hanuman (three as well), Siwa (Lord Shiva, two!), Kali Maa (one, but the one that I feel the shrine is quite centred on), Saraswati (one of the largest, I asked my mother to bring back from Bali for me), Dewi Sri (one of the few metal statues, also brought back from Bali one year by my mother), and a very tiny metal statue of Lakshmi who is sometimes syncretised with Dewi Sri. There is also a palm-sized resin statue of the Holy Family I grew up with that my beloved Ravyn gifted to me in Portland, Oregon. The Holy Family I am referring to is of course Lord Siwa, Parwati (Uma Parvati Durga Maa), and Ganesh, their sweet and knowing child.
I return to the magic at hand.
Later, I am sitting at a gate in an airport, awaiting our flight to Bali. I begin to pray a spell I have been singing since I first learned to drive a scooter in Bali over a decade ago when I moved there for two years. I won’t share the melody with you, that’s part of its power, but it goes like this…

Hermes, Hanuman, Ganesha, St Christopher, Woden, guard, guide and protect me on this journey… may it be safe, swift, successful… in your holy names I pray of thee.

What some self-righteous modern pagans would decry as “mixing pantheons” strikes me more as looking like a spell right from an ancient papyri. These Great Ones all mean something to me and I have relationship with each on their own terms. And through me - and throughout history - they relate to one another too. Together they are very powerful and bless me often.
It has been only in the last month that I added Woden’s name to this prayer-spell, because as I said earlier I have been resisting His presence in my life for years. This is humorous to me in hindsight considering I have bled on each rune and also inked them into my skin. When he first appeared to me - because I invoked him to help me when I was 14 - he told me specifically that he would see me again. And he has turned up in the strangest places in my life. I am honoured to call him friend. I, like them, am quite the wanderer myself. Often in the name of magic and love, as well.
Nothing about anything that happened above I would call eclectic, for it has never been about my individual choice or desire. It has always been about synchronicity, fateful unfolding, initiation, and relationship. To me it is a clearly syncretic, distilled, representation of a life lived connected to several cultural realities, threads, lineages, and lore. No iota of offence can be sensed coming from any shrine, all I feel is shared ecstasy and a pulsating power that we are weaving together.
The best magic I do is when I get out of the way, hold the vision, let the vision unfold and open more of itself for me to behold. The most powerful magic for me is to dance with my spirits and mysteries together, to bring something better than I could even know or imagine.
Magic in this way has always been creative and collaborative for me, a source of healing, insight, and remembering. A source of marvels and uncanny synchronicities, a conjuration at the crossroads of more than just company and conspiracy, but also courage. X
Did I banish or farewell any spirit or god I called? Absolutely not. We are always linked. I have bone-deep, cellular vows and ink in my skin that anchor these intimacies. When I called out to them I brought my witch’s attention to them, and yes! perhaps also got their attention in that moment, in that circle between the worlds.
When I finish my work, my rituals, my invocations and magic, I instead chant,
Peace, Praise, and Power… over and over. This is something I started to say years ago which has caught on in some circles and traditions. It’s what I really mean anyway and I’d prefer to say exactly what I mean. This is magic.
I release the Circle into the air in the way I have been taught. I cast it in a Feri way so I release it in a Feri way because that seems in right relationship. Words from my Mighty Dead, received in holy inspiration and drawn from folklore and folk magic, and perhaps passed from earlier groups, are spoken with intense focus and reverence. The knife does specific things. The Circle is now open.
I didn’t say this then, but sometimes witches offer this blessing at the ending of our rituals,
The Circle is open, but unbroken. Merry meet, merry part, and merry meet again.
The last part comes from witch trial records, or at least certain Somerset accused witches were said to say “merry meet and merry part! A-boy!” at the end of their gatherings. Apparently the freemasons also like to use a similar refrain which perhaps they too picked up from certain records remarking on these witchcraft confessions.
In my ritual-working above four rivers of four great witch traditions connected, in one seamless magical expression. They are the four traditions I am initiated within, the four traditions that have helped raise me. But it is important to remember I came to each of those traditions as a witch already. They have helped - and continue to help - me become the witch I am today. X