Saturday, July 10, 2010

Tracing Back The Strands

I stand at the tree in the place
and I weave
The wind whips up, the rain comes down
Yet still I weave

I watch the weave grow, I chant
My fingers work
I'm wet and I'm cold
Yet I still work

It seems dark there in that high place
As I call out my wishes to the wind
I take the magic, gather it up
Then weave it all in

When it's done I take the cord
Apple tree to hand
The wind drops, the rain calms
We give our thanks to the land

Weeks later I found
What I wove had come to pass
It didn't work out how I'd wanted
I should have wove better than that

Instead of a panicked attempt
Of weaving on a train
When I made everything all the worse for me
To keep what could not be saved

I should have known better
But the stakes were too high for me
I'd tried to work against wyrd
But had I not, what kind of a mother would I have been?

Friday, July 9, 2010

Remember, Mugwort!!!

I'm walking around a place called the Druidenhain. It may or may not have been a place where the druids worshipped but it's special all the same. There's an energy here, a vibe that you don't often find outside of the British Isles. It's never truly 'clear' here. It's hazy in a way that even my 'ignore everything possibly spooky' husband can't deny and things move around you.

You're never truly alone here but it's comfortable all the same.

The forest is welcoming in parts and forbidding in others. A mixture of 'good neighbourhoods' and 'bad'. The trees move here too, come to recline on rocks and if you look for long enough, sometimes you catch their faces in the bark. Most of them are nice but others are not so but I hold my ground all the same, sit on a rock and tell them that I'm not going to be a problem to them. I've come a long way.

People come here too, to do things not so dissimilar to what I do. They bend birch trees into living archways, leave offerings and write runes in the moss. So I tread with caution. These things are familiar and so I make sure I'm protected because who knows what I could trip off in a moment of carelessness? I use the archways as viewing places, I sit on a rock and sit so I can see both through an archway and normally too. Sometimes I see figures moving quickly. Small, some transparent and only able to be seen by the distortion of 'pixels' that they produce when they move, others strangely blue and others are small, black, shadow beings. It doesn't surprise me that they are there, those things are drawn to power. The blue one I'm not so sure of, but the others, yes.

I walk around and find nine different sticks, these are going to be used later.

I go to the place where I drummed the last time I came to the Druidenhain. When the song of my drum rang out loud and clear over the thudding of the beats. It'd been such a long time since I'd played my drum, I'd forgotten how beautiful a song he has.

I sit down and I mentally pull at the surrounding area. They're shy but soon my head begins to swim as I chant silently in German. I tell them I have nothing but respect for them and to please show themselves. I need more time but I don't have it. My friend's dog is getting restless and the others want to leave the place in which I could quite happily stay a whole day and so I take what I have and we make offerings to the land spirits of the forest.

After the blot, I take some private time and turn to go to a hidden place but not before a stick stops me. My husband says he hasn't a clue where it came from because it wasn't there before but it's just the right height for me and so I pick it up. I then bury the past. That particular past with a bit of work could help the area and the wights. What was my mistake could be their help.

We leave and I take my new stick. At home I notice carvings on the length of the staff and I'm not sure because of what others may have done and so I brew up mugwort just in case. I tell the herb to remember its words at the council and to use its power to help me, I sing the words onto the staff and make sure to breathe them onto the wood to give them life and then I sing runes. I guess only time will tell.