Witchvox Article

Author: Lady Abigail [a WitchVox Sponsor]
Posted: August 26th. 2012
Times Viewed: 3,001

The air was hot and still. Nothing was moving and I believe it would have been completely silent except for the katydids calling from the weeping willow tree in my Great Grandmother�s yard. Normally, I loved summer. I would run and play, climbing every tree, rock and fence I could find. But today it was just too hot. It had been hot for days and days with no rain, not even a cloud to chase across the hayfield.

I wanted to play; I wanted to climb high up inside the weeping willow tree and call the wind to gently blow the long branches across the yard. But it was too hot and all I seemed to be able to do was lie there on my Great Grandmother�s wooden back porch. My arms and head were hanging over the edge as I watched the ants going in and out of the cracks in the earth made from it being so dry.

I couldn�t remember it ever being so dry that the grass was brown and crunched when you walked across it, or the garden being so dried out that even the plants seemed to bow down when given water from the side well. Everything was so dusty that every morning my Great Grandmother would damp mop the floors and wipe everything in the house trying to keep the dust away. But, she would have to repeat it all by the end of the day.

As I looked across the fields, the piercingly bright sun was just starting to set and the dust in the air looked strange, like some kind of yellow haze across the land. My Great Grandmother walked out of the house, fanning herself with the dust rag and said, �Well, I have seen worse, but I think it has gotten bad enough that we need to call a little rain.�

My Great Grandmother lived during and in the dust bowl. She told me stories of how one day the sky turned red and then black as a billowing wall of dust blew across the land. She told me how farms, friends and family died because of the dust and heat; many believing it was some kind of punishment from god or even the end of the world.

I turned and looked at my Great Grandmother as she sat down on the big porch swing and asked her if it being so hot and dry was a punishment. Was the Mother Goddess mad at us? She smiled and said, no, explaining that the Mother Goddess/ Earth Goddess would never harm or destroy herself or her children. What sense would that make? She explained that what had happened before was not a punishment unless it was a self-punishment by man. That even then, people and farmers were being told to change how they farmed and cared for the land but they wouldn�t listen. As I climbed up next to her on the porch swing, she told me about our lack of our respect for the land, how people over-farmed, planted and harvested and that that caused the dust storms, not the Goddess or a God.

That evening, we sat outside and had cold chicken and ice tea for dinner. It was just way too hot to be inside. As the night sky began to turn a purplish hue, I could see car lights moving down the road toward us. We lived away from the city and from trafficked roads. Even as the dark of the night sky was falling, you could still see the white dust thrown up from behind the car as it went along. I was so excited I forgot about the heat and began running toward the front gate. I knew, even in the dark, that the car bumping up and down and from side to side down the road carried the Aunts.

Soon you could hear the springs on the old car as it bounced to a stop. The dust was swirling all around it, into the beams of the headlights and falling to the ground. I was so excited whenever the Aunts came to visit. I could not wait to see what each would be bringing with her in the baskets and bags.

Then I heard a strange clinking sound; yes, it was a clink. I expected herbs, roots, tools of magick, sometimes even a little candy. But I didn�t think I had ever heard that clinking before. I followed everyone as they made their way to the porch where my Great Grandmother had a kerosene lamp burning. The Aunts were all talking at the same time and it always reminded me of the crickets I could hear when in bed at night; all chirping at once and somehow understanding whatever the others were saying.

Soon they had pulled the side table out into the yard where I could just barely see it in the lamplight. A small black pot with three long legs had been placed in the middle of it with what seemed to me hundreds of bee�s wax candles all around it and inside it. They were the candles we had made last fall. I knew they were going to be doing some kind of magick but not to be using the huge hanging pot they normally used with a great fire underneath seemed a bit strange to me. Later, my Great Grandmother would explain to me that they were careful not to fire up the large cauldron when the land was what she called, dry as kindling.

All signs of the sun were gone and the stars where starting to show one by one in the black night sky. Soon the Aunts came from the house with their baskets and began pulling out the clinking things from inside. They were bottles. Bottles and jars filled with water. Water from creeks, ponds, lakes and even their own wells. My Great Grandmother told me to get the blue mason jar of water from the kitchen we had filled early in the morning when watering the garden. I carried it to the table so very carefully, I always wanted to make my Great Grandmother proud and show her what a big girl I was; ready to learn and help with whatever magick they were going to be doing.

I always knew when the magick was going to happen. The energy changed. The Aunts and my Great Grandmother would become quiet, more serious somehow, knowing what each other was thinking without saying a word. To me, it was as if the whole world around them became silent in reverence to what was happening. Like on this night.

I watched the candlelight grow as one by one each candle began to glow, first the ones on the table and then the ones inside the pot. The bottles and jars were everywhere... on the table, in the yard and even hanging from the weeping willow tree. I could hear their prayers and chants as they echoed across the night in a rhythmic rhyme. I watched as they filled the pot to its brim with water from the bottles, never touching even one of the burning candle flames. Before too long, I lay back in brown grass looking into the night sky filled with stars, my eyes heavy as I was slowly carried into my dreams by all the sounds around me.

That morning I awoke suddenly. Not from any sound really or even my Great Grandmother�s cooking of breakfast. It was the aroma of rain; that wonderful sweet smell of rain in hot summer. I jumped up and ran to the window where I could see it raining and running down the windowsill. It must have been raining for hours. Excitedly, I walked into the kitchen to find my Great Grandmother lighting up the stove to make hot biscuits. I asked if the magick that she and the Aunts had done the night before made it rain. She turned and lovingly told me never to ask if it worked, know that it did.

I didn�t understand that, so she explained that they were not just working a spell or magick for rain. They were saying thank you unto the powers that be for the rain. That they could see inside their hearts the earth being blessed by the rain, the ground again green, the trees and flowers blooming. They were saying thank you for all the blessings they were going to receive from the rain because they had known, without question, it would rain.

Recently, I had someone ask me if magick was real. I smiled at them and said, �YES!�
Magick is a gift, like life. It is a light within you and it is a part of who you are. All you need do is understand and make a choice to be open to all the possibilities around you. You can nourish this gift with positive energy and acceptance, or you can destroy it with questions and uncertainty. I feel sorry for those that will not see, for they choose to be blind to all the magick of life. I believe these people fear what they do not know so much that they will seek to somehow destroy the gifts in others. This never works.

Those who know and trust the magick and the gifts within themselves also know to say thank you. For it is not going to happen, it has happened. So give no heed to those who only protest and negate the magick that lives within your life. Proudly hold your magick and your energy within your heart and share it with those that will nourish you with positive light.

Blessed shall your path be within the light of magick, love and peace.

Lady Abigail
Copyright � 07262012
High Priestess, Ravensgrove Coven
Indianapolis area

Copyright: Lady Abigail
Copyright � 07262012
High Priestess, Ravensgrove Coven

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