Tag: Magic

The longing

”Down to Earth then sinks the sun”

It’s here again. The time of the year when the fingers of the coming Autumn tap me on my shoulder. When the sky feels heavier and the sun slower. A time, for me, of remembering trauma and of slow feet, fast tears and …something else.

I felt it today when I was out in the garden and covering up my cold frame until the next growing season begins again in Spring. A feeling in my chest, that spread through the rest of my body. A feeling that I know intimately but also have never really owned. As I pottered around with the last of the evening sun warming my face and arms, the yearning began. It’s a strange nostalgia, a sense of things slowing down and getting ready to sleep for the Winter to come, a picture in my mind of a Winter spent being burrowed and cosy and rested. A nostalgia for the waning sun bathing the land around me in subtle yellows and oranges as things get tidied and gathered. It’s a real visceral sadness, like the feeling you get when you’ve been to an amazing festival and know that you now have to pack up your tent and go home to face another normal week, leaving behind the magic of what you have just experienced.

This feeling of nostalgia isn’t really rooted in any real life experience, I didn’t grow up in some little English village where we drank ginger beer and got up to escapades amongst the stone cottages and wheat fields, I grew up in suburbia on the outskirts of Manchester, but when we get to this point in the year, my heart suddenly reverts to this yearning. It’s a bitter sweet feeling. One laced with love but also incredible melancholy. A very heady mixture. ‘Day is Done by Nick Drake is the perfect musical materialisation of this sensation.

I don’t really know what purpose it serves to have my brain start to pump out this intoxicating mix but it brings with it an awareness, something that I’m tippy toeing to reach and almost touching, like I’m just about to discover the meaning of it all and then I get drawn back into reality. Those little slots of time outside of time are when I feel at my most magical and at one with everything. It’s a time of looking outwards and feeling actual proper contentment but the moment I look at it, it feels me looking and it slips away.

As it arrived today and I turned my face into the lazy sunshine, I got a sense of gratitude and wonder. Look how beautiful it all really is, a voice in my head told me it’s plain really, the tree dropping its leaves doesn’t question the cycle, it doesn’t try to cling on to what needs to be let go of. The Earth carries on with its trip around the Sun, no fighting itself to stay in the warmth. They know everything is as it should be. They trust the process.

A reminder for me, for us all. Magic is in the lack of resistance. Stop pushing, stop hankering for what can no longer be or what no longer is needed. KISS-Keep it simple, stupid.


Liminal, Liminal, Liminal

”Time is contagious, everybody’s getting old” – Damien Rice

*You are being warned, there may be liberal use of the word ‘liminal’ in this post.

Last night I had a dream, and in part of it I was talking to a stranger about the circular nature of time, how nothing is really new because everything repeats ad infinitum. We talked about how even people repeat (not in the DNA someone’s child sense but in the ‘shop that does faces only has a certain amount of faces’ sense).

Then I woke up and a thought struck me about my upcoming birthday and ageing and the generations. I was talking to my sister a few days ago and we mentioned that both our partners were turning 50 this year, how we ourselves are getting there. I said “Gen X is getting old”.

Do I want to get old? No, not really but I accept its inevitability and try to see the value of wisdom that age brings as well as finding power in becoming the Crone (I have written before about ageing as a woman so I won’t repeat myself here ). I remember when I was in my teens in the mid 90’s (hitting 18 in 1995 was such a sweet spot, I feel sorry for people who missed it) I would look at people who are my age now and think how old they were. Now I’m here myself, I look in the mirror and see the same face, a little softer round the edges, less taut, but in essence the same face and ponder on how ‘ewww old’ I must look to my Gen Z/ Alpha nephew and niece even though in my mind and brain I am still youthful and vital and progressive.

Generation X are a great generation (generally speaking, I know I can’t lump everyone in the same boat) we are down to earth, funny, had the best music and we were fighters because we went through some stuff. We were known as the forgotten generation, the latchkey kids, the last to climb trees and wander outside to play (I will put a caveat here that the older millennials also experienced this, we have a lot in common geriatric millennial friends). This was a liminal generation, the ones who existed during the coming of the Internet. The early adopters of mobile phones and chat rooms. Factor in the liminality of these changes along with the liminality of being a late Gen Xer and crossing the boundaries when the generation changed from X to Y, I truly think it was a magical time. There was something in the air in the 90’s that can’t be explained or replicated. We liked weird shit, all my peers at that time were into UFO lore, magic, the supernatural and it’s carried through with us into our older years. A time of discovery, pushing boundaries, experimenting with psychedelics and a feeling of community. It also explains why I’ve finally found my Tuath of a disparate group of beautiful weirdos consisting (mostly) of Gen X/milennials via Vayse.

I may be being biased, I am after all part of Gen X so of course I will say we were wonderful, but I also have the advantage of actually being there, experiencing it and I know it was special. Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t perfect, there were things that needed to change, bad stuff went on as it always does but it was bloody magical.
There’s a word in Brazilian – ‘Saudades’. It’s has no definite translation but it means yearning, sweet nostalgia, melancholic longing for something beloved. This is how I feel when I remember the 90’s.

Back to my theory on cyclical time, I have a crude (unscientific) theory that cultural changes occur in 30 year cycles. The 60’s, the 90’s and well, we are due our next one very soon (if it’s not already started). Then Gen Z and the Alphas can, 30 years from now, write rambling and nostalgic posts about what a magical and turbulent time the 2020’s was.

There’s some comfort in going through these cyclical loops because we know that they resolve even when it feels like all hope is lost. It is one big repeating ritual. This however, is not an excuse to sit on our laurels, we still need to agitate, to push, to create, to be magical and strive for better for ourselves and each other. I just hope that this cycle brings people back to the unknown again, a curiosity in the other. That the materialism (both types) that has dominated becomes obsolete as we peer back into the abyss and see that actually it’s rather interesting.

       This is me in 1995, 18 yrs old at a festival somewhere.

Asleep and awake

Where have I been? I last wrote something in April this year, I was on a roll getting ideas and generally enjoying writing again and then I disappeared. Did An Mórrígan claim me when I went into Her cave never to return to the apparent world?

Unfortunately, no, nothing that exciting I’m afraid, I flatlined, energetically, physchologically and emotionally. I’ve spent the past few months feeling prone, prostrate and deflated with no inspiration to speak of. There has also been something bubbling along that has taken most of my mental capacity these past months that I won’t talk about right now but may explain soon.

I did however get my visit to Uaibh na gCat, the cave of the cats, the home of An Mórrígan. On the morning of the visit I was jangly, nervous and jittery, my nerves tap dancing in my brain and body. I’ve no idea why I was so strung out by the thought of the day ahead but there we go, the body does what it wants.

I enjoyed the tour of Rathcroghan given by the visitors centre https://www.rathcroghan.ie/ but I was there for the main event, a trip to the Otherworld. It was my pilgrimage for the year. I’ve been dying to go to Oweynagat for a long time but was never well enough to make the journey.

As we approached the cave all my jingle-jangle from earlier just dissolved away

A photo of a small cave entrance. It sits amongst Green trees and bushes.


I looked into the womb-like entrance and could not wait to enter. As I sat there waiting, there was a voice from somewhere deep in that cave, urging me to ‘come in, come in’. An affirmation of finally doing this at the right time, in the right headspace.


In small groups of 4 or 5 we began our descent into the home of An Mórrígan, some people turned back at the entrance, not yet ready to descend. I had an offering in my pocket of a small dram of whiskey (it would be rude to visit without a gift) and soon it was my turn to slide into the entrance. The floor was wet and thick with mud and the walls were glistening with moisture, it had that deep earthy smell that appears after a rainstorm. It got darker and darker as we descended and I got more and more comfortable in the dark, all enveloping environment.

The view of a ridged cave ceiling. It is solid rock and dark apart from the beam of torchlight that lights up the section on the photograph. There is a thick ridge running running along the centre of the ceiling that is almost pointed where it meets.


The metaphor of the cave is not lost on me, it reminded me of my transformation after trauma. I used to be scared of caves, the darkness in them always different to the dark of night. It is more solid and heavy somehow, more likely to have things creeping out of it to touch you on the shoulder. This time however, I had no fear, I have seen true darkness and spent my own recovery in the Hermit’s cave. I have sat in that darkness and embraced it, which enabled me to contain it within. It no longer scares me.

We reached the end (a rock fall prevented us going deeper) and stood in the cool darkness of the entrance to the Irish Otherworld.

This was the time for us all to turn off our torches. There we were for a minute or so, silent, bathed in that deep darkness. I tipped out my whiskey for An Mórrígan and ensured She knew how grateful I was and what a privilege it was to be in Her home.

Did I have a big revelation? Was I spoken to by An Mórrígan? Not that I’m consciously aware of. There was no Great Queen emerging from the darkness, no mystery breeze that blew through the cave. But as always with these things, they work away in the background, they slip through your subconscious and mould into something. Only months later when change has occurred in your life are you able to track it back to a ritual or a pilgrimage or that scrappy bit of throwaway magic you did off the cuff.

What I realise now is that my visit to the cave put me into hibernation again, to prepare me for what is to come. I am just rising again after months of waking sleep. My practice has evolved and become more tangible and consistent, I am getting ready for…something.

The Rite and the Ritual

It’s cold. Friggin’ baltic as we say over here. It feels like Winter proper. A welcome feeling because the past few Winters have been too warm, making us feel season-less and lost.

Winter Solstice, Alban Arthan is approaching. A time I have grown to love as I evolved from my immature, pre-trauma, sun lover into an appreciator of dark and The Shadow. Solstice is a time of beginnings as the Sun returns to us again. The longest night, a time of stillness and silence before the wheel tips once more into lengthening light. I’m choosing this years Solstice to mark my Irish Citizenship with a ritual. Usually, there is an official ceremony in Ireland where you receive your certificate and take an oath of fidelity, but due to COVID-19 my acceptance came with a bit of a quiet whimper. A brown envelope in the post in December 2021 and a quick photo in front of the fire.

Black and white photo of a smiling woman, holding up a piece of paper in one hand and giving a thumbs up sign with the other. She is in a living room in a house with a large picture on the wall behind her and a lit fire in the fireplace.
Hooray!

This suited my Hermit tendencies, a couple of days away with hundreds of other people at a formal ceremony is not my thing at all, but what it has done is make my transition into my Irish identity feel lacking somehow. My Irish roots are very important to me, my family, the O’Donnells from Donegal fled the Gorta Mor (Great Hunger) and ended up in Scotland and then sometime later Northern England. I subconsciously found my way back to Ireland and it is now my beloved home. I feel rooted here, reconnected to my ancestors whose trauma and subsequent uprooting is in my DNA. I have never felt ‘English’ and always like a fish out of water when I was there. I have journeyed to meet my ancestors and they are glad I am back, I am home and healing the relationship they had with the land.

This brings me to the importance of ritual and how in Western Society in general we have lost the ability to mark rites of passage in any meaningful way. We look at transitions as yearly birthdays and New Year. They get celebrated but usually in a pretty perfunctory way. Yet there are so many transitions and rites of passage in our lives, childhood to adulthood, old house to new house, a change of relationship or job, deaths, births, traumas, illness, the stages of menopause and transitions in our sexuality and gender identity. The ability to look deeply at these events and to mark them is something, I feel, that is fundamental to our psyche. We too easily let things pass and wash over us without marking and processing, that it becomes part of the soup that sits in our subconscious begging to be acknowledged and when we don’t, we can become overwhelmed and over wrought.

I love ritual, my spiritual practices over the years have allowed me to look at ritual and it’s importance. Ritual for me, is a charging of the batteries, it focuses energy and I always feel fabulous after I’ve taken the time to craft a solo ritual and then perform it. Ritual doesn’t have to be complicated or involve lots of trinkets and gee gaws, or be held in a sacred well or inside an ancient cave. It can be done quickly indoors or in the shower and sometimes all you need is some paper and a pencil or a single candle and some alone time to sit and journey and process

What delights we uncover when we enter our internal landscape and explore. We are not confined by our existence on the material plane, we can meet whatever or whomever we want and ask questions, listen to wisdom and enter places not possible with our solid, lumpy human bodies.

So, here we are thinking about my ritual for the Solstice, a time where I’ll enter the liminal space to bond with the land I call home and thank it for its beauty and its acceptance, where I hope to hear the voices of generations past who have lived, loved and struggled here, who will hopefully receive and welcome the tie to their home I have now created.

Creating meaningful ritual is the way of the Hermit. It is a door to a deeper sense of self that we miss and is sorely needed. Try it.

A wide black and white photo of a woman in la long cotton robe standing in the middle of a garden in front of a small standing stone. Surrounding the garden is a vast expanse of sky and undulating fields and hedges.
A ritual from this Summer. I’m lucky to be surrounded by this beauty.

Jeff Buckley is magical

Today is Jeff Buckley’s birthday, he would have been 56 years old today. This time of year is always a time when I get deep with my remembrance of Jeff, it’s Samhain season a time of death and purging, so it’s apt that Jeff as a Scorpio is always at the forefront of my life during November.

For those who don’t know him, Jeff was a musician who came to some prominence during the 90’s. His first and only studio album Grace was released in 1994 and he sadly died by accidental drowning in 1997 at just 30 years old. I found Jeff in the Summer of 1995 and he has travelled with me ever since. I think of all the ‘famous deaths’ of people I admired, Jeff is the one that lingers and cuts most deeply.

I have a very otherworldly relationship with Jeff and I think he had a very otherworldly relationship with the earth and its inhabitants. Jeff has a place on my death altar, he has become part of the pantheon of ‘other’ that I work with magically. The archetypes he embodies for me (The Lover, The magician, The creative, The artist and The Revolutionary) are extremely powerful and can be used magically to invoke and transform aspects of myself that I’d like to bring forward.

I light my Jeff idol candle and speak to him often. I love how magic can be so flexible, it doesn’t have to involve prescribed Gods and Godessess and fifty million trinkets. If it moves you, use it. With Jeff it’s easy, his music is the ritual. It contains light and darkness, it transcends just being a nice tune with a hook. It is incredibly healing and cathartic. I have released love, rage, frustration and a myriad of other emotion with his music alone. His voice and how he used it, made it a conduit, a wailing banshee of pure feeling, it feels like being baptised by chaos and fire and light.

I truly believe that Jeff was one of those magical beings that transcended mere ‘human-ness’ I see him as an Undine, a water elemental, he just poured that watery emotional energy into the world. As sad as his death was, it was time to go home and the waters reclaimed him.

Today on his birthday, I’m listening to his music (although listening is maybe not the correct word for it) I’m absorbing it in some kind of mystical osmosis and allowing it, like a river, to wash through me. Jeff also reminds me that sometimes humans are magical and beautiful creatures and that we are capable of wonderful things. A useful reminder that fosters hope. A sigh of relief when things feel heavy. He is the lighthouse to which I sometimes need to steer my boat.

I can’t really adequately express what my internal voice is trying to say because I can’t find the words that do it justice, whenever I put words to paper regarding Jeff I always get these half baked water metaphors (as seen throughout this post) but maybe that’s how it needs to be, Undine Jeff infiltrating with his watery medicine.

Happy Birthday Jeff Buckley. You marvellous wizard. You are missed.