Witchvox Article

Author: harley hashman
Posted: October 11th. 2009
Times Viewed: 1,897

I live in a townhouse-styled apartment, which is overpriced, timeworn, and small, unremarkable except for a tiny park next door.

This park is a forgotten piece of real estate owned by an old grandfatherly gentleman who I have talked to on occasion. He refuses to sell his lot, showing up now and again just to sit in an old lawn chair and read his paper in peace.

The lot is about a half acre, a lovely little place with a stream dividing it down the middle, wildflowers, a single old cedar tree, and several silver maples. On an autumn evening it is the abode of fluttering butterflies and foxgloves, St. John's Wort, delphiniums, and dandelions.

One summer's day I was just standing in that part next to the stream, soaking up the sun after three days of rain.

Two boys were playing with large plastic dump trucks in a sandlot nearby. One of them peered over at me from time to time

I raised my arms to the sun. As I did, a flight of dozens of white butterflies descended. They flew all around me. Several of them landed, a couple at least on my head and a half dozen on each arm. There were none anywhere else in the park.

I laughed and jerked my arms up. The butterflies took flight, a white fury of beating wings in the summer's air.

The kid cried out. "Hey mister? How're you doing that?"

Ah. This place, it's an oasis of undeveloped loveliness surrounded by a hostile concrete desert. Nature's last stand.

Ivy-encrusted condos face it on three sides. Next door is a used car lot but it is hidden behind the trees. As such it seems the ideal place to perform Pagan ritual. The condo windows that face me are all dark or curtained.

I decided since it is still close to Samhain, Oct. 31, when the veil between worlds is at its weakest, to invoke a vision from the Dark Mother, the triple goddess Hecate.

I burn the herb Shepard's Purse during the rite. It is an herb of divination that has an indescribable odor, one that induces in me a feeling of tremendous nostalgia, as if it were from some partially remembered childhood dream. I carry a small iron cauldron partially filled with beach sand to absorb heat, and a burning charcoal disk upon which to sprinkle the powerful visionary herb.

I also bring along my six-inch quartz crystal. I create magick space, this time in the form of a triangle rather than a sphere, the three corners representing both the Maid, Mother, and Crone, the Trilogy of the Old Faith, and the three crossroads at which Hecate can be met at a time of Her own choosing.

I evoke the goddess using the following incantation. It was created from bits and pieces of surviving rituals from ancient Greece, translated into Latin and much later, into English:

Come Hecate of the three ways,
Who with thy attendant shades have been allotted
Dread roads and harsh enchantments.
Hail pale light, ruler of Tartaros,
Beam which whirls up out of darkness.

Destiny is ere subject to thee.
Of serpents are ye joined, serpent-haired and
serpent girded.
Enodia riding down from Thessaly on a pale horse,
Leading a host of shades, we hail thee and
Implore thee to meet with us at thy crossroads
three.

World tree, thy roots reach Hades' realm,
to suckle upon the essence of the dead.
To thee the corruption of the grave is nectar.
Thou art the bridge between the deathless and the mortal.
Thou art the petitioned, the avatar of witches,
The Queen of Heaven and the Queen of the Pit.

Daughter to Demeter, Enodia, hear; beginning and
end are within thee from which all mortal things
are either birthed or else recede to their end.
Thou art the propitious regent of every public way
amid the bright of day and greater still are thee
in the terror of night's darkest hour.

O Hecate, as thou moveth the adamant door of death,
so may you in covenant be the fulcrum by which we
witches move all else immobile.

Rise Dark Mother,
Regina ex Saga. (Queen of the Witches)

As unfortunately happens when attempting to create sacred space in the city, some clod will inevitably intrude with the sounds of lawn mowers, leaf blowers, or a stereo.

The latter was the case here. The attendant of the car lot, stuck on the night shift, decided to crank up the lot PA system and play pop at decibel levels enough to cow a supersonic jet.

I was about to bag it, to give up and consider the evening ruined, when the idea struck me, now that I had evoked the goddess Hecate, to ask Her, the Dark Mother, for Her aid to allow the ritual to continue.

Five minutes later I saw the lights of a police car flash through the chinks in the fence. I heard a cop warn the punk to shut off the music. A few seconds later blessed silence returned to the glade.

Hey, now the ritual could go on.

My crystal swiftly filled with a pale green light. The glow of the almost full moon gleamed down and illuminated the small white flowers of the glade in cool fire.

An image appeared, so quickly that it startled me. It was a very clear and bright image, as if the orb was a small monochromatic television set, a monitor that could only project shades of blue on blue.

I saw a winged woman, her wings of gossamer and fashioned like those of a death's-head moth, with eye-like patterns upon them. Her hair was long and like silver thread. Her stocking feet wore a dancer's slippers.

Just then I noticed movement in the heavens. It was just past eleven o'clock. A brilliant fireball crossed the sky, trailing spits of sparks as it flew. The next day I read about the Russian booster rocket that had reentered the atmosphere, flashing across four counties.

Now that it was gone I turned my attentions back to the crystal. The image was still there. Was there some connection between the two?

Then it spoke in a soft, clear, distant voice.

"I am the Dana of this place, " she said, "I am she who speaks for this barrow, for this small place which remains."

I was amazed. I felt so honored that I had been contacted so clearly. Yet I wondered why she had chosen to answer my call.

"You honor and love this place as we do and harm none, so I have come unto thee."

It was as if she was responding to my unspoken query.

A cloaked figure appeared next to her. It was larger and more massive than she. He pulled back his cowl, revealing a powerful, bearded face. The pair embraced. He then spoke to me a brief and formal greeting. The image remained in the orb no matter what angle I looked or even if I looked away and then returned.

I recognized this pair. I had seen them before in a previous scrying vision from almost exactly a year before, when I had first moved to this place and erected my temple.

I had seen a couple walking through a graveyard under the moonlight. She had carried a large copper lantern. Then he had come forth from behind some hiding place and the pair had embraced. That image had been nearly as crisp as this one.

Finally the male figure in the crystal departed. The winged lady said her farewell. Soon there was nothing but the blue glow in the crystal, almost bright enough to read by, as if a small electric bulb had been inserted in the core of the crystal.

I covered the crystal in a black silk cloth and began to gather up my ritual tools. It had been a fantastic evening.

Yet it was not over yet.

There was a huge cedar stump nearby, a former forest patriarch that was about seven feet across and several hundred years old. On its flat stage were numerous cracks and fissures.

As I glanced over at the stump I noticed a tiny blue light rise from one of the fissures. It was followed by another and another. I carefully placed my gathered items on the soft grass and crept closer to get a better look.

On the flat wooden slab danced dozens of tiny blue lights.

Each was like a small intense flame. At the base of each was a diminutive dark speck, like a pill bug or a dark pebble. They moved across the stump with graceful ease.

There were perhaps forty of them and together they formed two circles, side by side. They danced widdershins (counterclockwise) in this figure eight. One loop was larger than the other and in the center of this stood the brightest light of them all, standing still while the others danced around it.

The tiny lights were bright enough to cast moving shadows as they danced beneath the moon. To my delight the dance went on for the better part of an hour. I got the distinct impression that the central light was the Dana who had talked to me before in the crystal.

Then a loud dog began to bark. A distant police siren wailed. The lights retreated one by one into the cracks in the wood. The brightest one was the last to flee.

I left my little glade filled with wonder and awe and what I had witnessed.

*** (Afterword: A year later a tractor came and dug up the stump. They chopped it up and burned it. A few weeks later a condo stood where the tiny oasis of nature had been.)

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