The Work Of A Witch

Thorn: Some began to wail at the white line that marks the boundary between one world and another, between the place where we could stand and the place where we could not. People began wailing, and crying. The drumbeat started and I had to cross. I had to stand upon that land and offer what healing I could muster. I had to walk upon the stones and sand of ancient seabed where I had not stood for a decade of years.

As soon as I stepped across that line, I began weeping. The land rose up and met my feet, surrounding me with recognition: I had come. I had come. I had come.

Once inside the holding pen, I hung a string of paper cranes to fly in the harsh wind, and then walked as far as I could and looked out upon the desert, sending wings of energy and light up into sky and down to earth. Spreading these wings, I let healing roll out from me. The land drank. I could do little, but as we always do, I did my best with what I had. The wind held my body upright, I moved with it, as though riding on the ocean, or dancing with a firm and strong beloved wrapped around my back. I was home… for I was with my Mother, who is everywhere and no place. I was standing on the earth.

Some days, it's big work, like Thorn sending wings of energy and light up into the sky and down into the Earth of a weapon-scarred desert. Letting the healing roll out from her body, the raw instrument and tool of a Witch, the living, fleshy opening between magic and the world, between above and below, between the "magic" and the "mundane" (which are one). The land drinks and, as Thorn says, we do the best that we can with what we have.

Some days, it's little work. Being thankful and kind to all the people with whom we interact, sending the energy of our sex acts out to the still-winter-harmed trees in our yards, doing little magics to support friends in new jobs, family members looking for work, a president seeking a new SCOTUS justice, being open to the incredible magic all around us. Grounding.

But it's all the work of a Witch. Someone once said, and it drew me to this religion like a magnet, A Witch takes responsibility. And that, in the end, is all that we can do. We can use our magic and our intellect and our bodies and we can take responsibility. We can open our wet, fleshy, amazing bodies to magic and we can move it between the Worlds. And what we do between them, affects them all. It's a big job. But someWitch has to do it.