Winter Musings ~ Wild Awakening
There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society, where none intrudes,
By the deep sea, and music in its roar:
I love not man the less, but Nature more”
― Lord Byron
The world is imbued with spirit.
Divinity can be felt, seen and heard.
Our spiritual and magical practices should ring loud with these truths for they form the very essence of all that is and all that may be. The mundane and the magical do not exist as separate entities but are instead entwined and one could argue that the reason we find ourselves on the precipice is because we have forgotten these truths; that we have tried to untwist the threads that hold everything together. This is how we have found ourselves in the Anthropocene, the age of man. The age of destruction. We have torn the spirit from the mundane, ignoring the call of the wild; the feel of spirit as we walk beneath the canopy of the forest or traverse hills and mountains. We have come to believe in our power and our power alone.
Such folly.
As we stand on the precipice, our magicks must become wild once more. They must transform to fit the age, as they ever have. We must transform if we are to fight back against the injustices Capitalism forces on nature and on ourselves. Our magicks must become that of dirt, blood and bone. My own practice is a blending of witchcraft, the kind with no dogma, that belongs to the Devil (the biggest and most well known scapegoat of all) and the wild, as well as Vodou of the bokor variety, serving the loa with both hands, and Obeah. Some will inevitably call appropriation, ignoring the fact that such traditions are mine by my heritage, by my blood. By the spirits that walk beside me and my ancestors whose blood courses through my veins, blood of my blood. And besides, they mesh well together for each recognises the world of spirit, recognises that we are a part of that world and act within it. Each honours the wild, indeed prefers the wilds and are more potent when worked outside beneath the sky, with feet bare and hair loosened. Each transcends the labels we put on them.
And so, as my practice dictates, as I feel the call of the wild, of the spirits and divinity, I find myself outside more and more often. Sometimes it’s the closest woods to my home, named after the Devil himself, sometimes I meander along the riverbank, other times it’s over field and along rutted path with the dog running free. Sometimes it’s only in my garden where trees and bush have dominion, where the wild clings even in this concrete jungle. It is in these places where Divinity speaks the loudest, where spirits reach out and their touch felt. And sometimes in the cemetery where the bones of my beloved dead lay and the yew tree spreads it’s boughs.
The natural world is imbued with spirit, so much so that their call is so loud I’m amazed others don’t hear it through the fuzzy cheap glamour of ‘real life.’ The natural world is where the gods can be found, for they do not yearn for temples or buildings. It is enough to be in nature, to feel it. To love it. Indeed it is trees that act as conduits between the realms. It is through trees that the loa descend and ascend. It is in the wild wood where we meet the Devil in sabbat. It is in the darkest depths of the forest that Sasabonsam fills our bones with Obiya. It is the water of rivers and lakes and ponds that spirit can emerge forth to teach us how to truly live. It is from the earth which our ancestors have enriched with their bodies, returning to it as they came from it that we call them forth and ask them to walk with us through this age of man, through the Anthropocene.
It is outside beneath the great sky in which we learn the lessons given freely, if only we open our eyes wide enough and our hearts just a little. It is the lessons taken from spirit, from gods and from ancestors that in turn transforms our magicks and makes them as weapons to fight back against the decay that has set in like a cancer. But first we must remember simple truths, almost forgotten.
The world is imbued with spirit.
Divinity can be seen, heard and felt.
EMMA KATHRYN
Emma Kathryn, practises traditional British witchcraft, Vodou and Obeah, a mixture representing her heritage. She lives in the sticks with her family where she reads tarot, practises witchcraft and drink copious amounts of coffee.
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