A Brief Meditation on Tears

I skipped the Akhu dua because I needed to speak to my mother at length, so I did my own ceremony and spent a long time by the ancestor shrine. By the time that was over, it was already 5pm and the chat was probably winding down as well, so I didn’t log on. I was also crying something fierce, which would have made internet-ing hard...

Baggage

[I’m home from the holidays and slowly getting caught up on e-mails, comments, and what-not…sorry for the delay folks. Internet access is inconsistent at best when I’m at home for a variety of reasons despite the relatively good internet my father has, but I digress…this post is the first of many catch up posts…]

Set and I have a thing about baggage. I’ve mentioned this before but it bears repeating: He loses my bags. Seriously. No one could possibly be as unlucky as I am in this without some sort of divine intervention. And no, the irony of this being about baggage has not escaped me.

Brief Thoughts About Change on the First Night of the Mysteries of Wesir

This is relevant to what I am feeling as I contemplate the first night of the Mysteries. 

The Akhu feasted on Welsh Rarebit tonight, and partook deeply of spiced apple cider. I filled the little well on the altar almost to brimming with cool water and lit the candle, the light glowing gently against the underside of the fresh cut flowers that I keep above the little cabinet that holds their images. The occasion also saw the raising and decorating of the Christmas tree, for though I am decidedly not Christian the tree is a family tradition and a December living room would feel incomplete without it. My mother loved the lights and ornaments when she lived and so I make sure her picture faces them so she can see the beauty of them.

The Tower Falls (aka "why I've been absent")

She tried several dreams earlier in the week, when she first sensed what was happening, but I didn’t catch on to the fact that it was her. This time she appeared as herself. She started with the house as a metaphor. It wasn’t a house we had ever owned in real life, but rather, it was the dream house we’d built from bits and clips of shows on HGTV. A bedroom like that, a living room like this, a double oven, beautiful craftsmen woodwork, a Victorian façade… we were arguing over the thermostat.

Cards

My Akhu got to claim a deck of their choosing today.

Yes…to my relief, they somehow got the package back for me: it was mysteriously “found” somewhere other than where it should have been and was then delivered to me, late, but with apologies from the post man. Sadly, my neighbor did not get her packages back…so I am doubly grateful that mine was ultimately recovered.

As I said before, despite being “just some playing cards” these decks are important to some of the current work I am doing. To give a brief explanation, each of the decks in the order was purchased for a different purpose...

 I am working with playing card divination and, having come to it from fully illustrated Tarot cards, wanted something a bit more special than the standard bicycle deck to learn with. The deck I ultimately chose, the Black Warrior deck, serves the purpose well, with beautiful court cards and half shaded pips which can allow for double meanings if I so choose.

However, given that I have several self-created divinatory decks which I have mentioned on the blog and, as many of you may know from having spoken to me, a fairly extensive collection of tarot cards as well this probably begs the question: why do you need yet another form of card divination? The short answer is that some of the work I’m doing now relies on listening to signs and omens, and because I tend to over analyze, I’ve had to resort to double checking everything via divination. While I’ve developed a strategy for that using my tarot decks, the truth is, I can’t keep a deck of tarot cards, or even a homemade oracle deck, on me at all times.

There is a constant worry that someone might see them in my purse and ask about them (a real fear for a public figure in a small town). There’s also the fact that tarot cards are expensive to replace if something happens to them, and depending on whether they are still in print or not, may even be impossible to replace. Not to mention that, in the interim, switching between tarot decks is a pretty big deal for me—I get used to a particular set of symbols and images and find it jarring to learn new sets or even apply the same set to more than one purpose. This is why my tarot decks have designated uses.

Playing cards, on the other hand, are cheap, easily replaced, and basically the same from deck to deck even if the art styles differ. They are a good option for on-demand divination because, as long as I am not too remote from civilization, I can always pick up a deck from a convenience store if I find myself caught without one. And of course, if someone sees an interesting playing card deck in my purse, it may start a conversation about collectible playing cards but it won’t tarnish my public image. In fact, if I can learn a few card tricks to perform when someone does notice them it even makes having a pack in my purse seem like an interesting facet of me as a person instead of a random oddity.

So…yeah. That’s why. I know that’s mostly just an excuse to buy pretty cards, but I am very happy with the deck I got and so far, the standard method of playing card divination has proved fairly easy to pick up with minimal practice.

I also ordered the Archangels deck and Artifice V3 decks—originally as alternatives to the deck I got for divination, but also just because I liked the cards and couldn’t help myself. Though one of those decks, the Archangels deck, is now claimed by the Akhu and I would guess the Artifice deck will eventually find a specific use as well.

Lastly, I got a deck of Arcane cards, which has a more complicated mystical purpose. I would explain in greater detail exactly what I am doing with it, but I’m not sure I have my thoughts about the project in order in a way which lends itself to being written about.

As a matter of fact, that’s partly why I got the deck in the first place: I needed to have something physical to represent this wordless *thing* which is building in my psyche so I can interact with it in more concrete terms. So in that regard, I guess you could consider it a talisman of sorts—though this specific deck won’t work for the talisman I have in mind. I was really just using it for proof-of-concept before I went scrounging up money for the deck I actually wanted but can’t afford right now. (In case you’re wondering: proof-of-concept is positive and I do hope to get that Moth Myth deck at some point in the future so I can make the concept a reality).

If this all gels into something useful, I will eventually write it up and post it here on the blog. In the meantime, I’ll quote from my notes the closest thing I have to a summary of the current phase of the project:

 “Illusions are, on the surface, a matter of hiding and revealing— but in more esoteric terms; they are the shadow of our fondest longing cast across the face of reality. In a way, they unmask us: they betray what we wish to deny and what we wish to create, and in doing so, betray the reflection of our deepest selves.” 

 (For anyone who read that and wondered: Yes, this relates to my trance work on an abstract level, and yes, I do think the magician dream factors into this as well though I am personally still uncertain of how or why.)

Not Everything Happens for a Reason

Disappointment really doesn’t even begin to describe the feeling of having the package you have been eagerly awaiting stolen from the foyer of your apartment building. And yes, while I am out $57 it actually isn’t the money which bothers me the most (though it does bother me…that’s a lot of money for me right now). I was excited to get my package, damn it! And now I’m not going to. :(

The worst part of this, however, isn’t the theft—it’s how I reacted to it. Namely, how I compulsively checked the mail box seven times that evening even though I knew that it wouldn’t be there and how I immediately blamed myself for the theft. As if there was anything I could do about it. Our apartment complex doesn’t offer a secure place for us to receive our packages and I can hardly afford a PO Box simply to receive stuff like this on the occasions that I order things through the mail. In my head I know that it is just a random crappy thing that happened to me…but...that doesn’t stop me from blaming myself.

My mind spun and I was a bit numb and shocked when I first realized what had happened, and then a small anxious part of me freaked out: clearly, the universe is trying to tell me that I’m making too many online purchases and this is to teach me a lesson about watching my finances and not ordering so many things through the mail. Yeah. That’s where my anxiety ridden brain immediately went. And that’s the bigger issue here.

I didn’t do anything to cause this. It just happened, and it sucked, but it didn’t have anything to do with my decisions or actions. It’s not some cosmic punishment for being an imperfect human being who occasionally spends too much dough on mail-order items. Just like my mother getting cancer: it doesn’t have anything to do with me. It isn't a divine judgement of me. It just happened. It doesn’t have to make sense.

Because not everything has to fit.

Because not everything has to be a direct consequence of things I have or haven’t done.

The world is not a 1:1 place; you don’t always get out what you put in. By the same token you sometimes get lucky and get a bonus. Not every bad thing is a failure just like not every good thing is a success. Just because there is a cultural predisposition in my community toward the old stand-by “everything happens for a reason”, doesn’t mean I have to buy into it. No, damn it—not everything has a reason.

That said, recognizing that I'm not culpable doesn’t mean I can’t still make something valuable out of the “random bad thing” that happened to me. I don’t have to go as far as to think that the package being stolen was somehow a direct result of my recently erratic spending habits, but the sudden anxiety I feel at the thought of losing such a large sum of money in one fell swoop does draw attention to just how shaky my finances are and how I continue to spend money despite not having any. That warrants paying some attention to the underlying reason for the freak out—there is something wrong here. There was a reason for my spending beyond “needing” the items, because I don’t need them but I still bought them and obviously I feel bad about it which means that on some level I’m already aware that it was a compulsive purchase and not a rational one and that concerns me on a level deeper than I am willing to acknowledge.

 But the fact that the package went missing isn’t a reflection on my worth as a person. If I choose to learn a lesson about my psyche from this, then that is my choice—but that doesn’t mean that the universe did this to me to teach me that lesson, it means I made meaning out of something which was otherwise inherently meaningless. Just like I found meaning in my mother’s illness.

Making meaning in the face of chaos and disorder is a triumph of human spirit, but we must not confuse it with a justification for those things happening in the first place.

…..and there’s a chance that the package just got delivered to the wrong box and that the other person will eventually notice the mistake and return it. Or that the delivery person accidentally marked it as delivered and didn’t actually take it off the truck. Or that it wasn’t delivered because a signature was required when I wasn’t expecting that and the delivery man either forgot to put a notification slip on my box or it blew away in the high winds we had. There have been other package thefts recently, but not all is lost just yet.

In case you're wondering, the package contained cards. No, not tarot cards, just regular (albeit collectible and therefore expensive) playing cards. But for reasons I will post about later, those cards are important to me for divinatory and other reasons.

 I sat before my Akhu shrine and offered a deal: intervene if you can to get the cards back for me, and you can have one of the decks dedicated solely to communicating with you--I'll even keep it in the Akhu shrine. So…we’ll see. I don’t know if there is anything they can do, but it is worth a shot.

Keeper of the Archives

I dare not claim I understand what happened that night, and to be honest... I try not to think about it.

 Four days after, I dwell again in the world of the living. Among people whose life-long ambitions and momentary goals shine through their brisk pace in the skyways and malls of downtown Minneapolis. The Wells Fargo center is a hub of activity—clicking heels echo against fine marble and the smell of crisp dry cleaned suits and professionally light perfumes fill the air. I get the sense that everyone around me is there for some modern purpose—opening new accounts, transferring money, tracking investments, renegotiating mortgage rates.  But we are there for a different purpose.

“I need both of you to sign,” the young man running the safety deposit vault says as he slides our IDs back across the counter.

We go with him to get the box and the sounds of the world disappear into heavy silence. In the small room we take it to, there is a single fluorescent light buzzing on the wall above a table, and we sit in the institutionalized chairs as we dig through the box looking for a small stack of envelopes. My father hands me one of the most faded ones and nods.

“Those are their citizenship papers.”

I look with reverence upon the faded images of my grandparents. Then I pull out my notebook and start writing. There is information on these forms that I need. Birth places, immigration dates, early addresses. All of it precious clues that will help me trace the family line as I go in search of names—in search of ancestors.

Because life doesn’t stop when someone close to you passes.

 Because our obligations to the dead do not end with those closest to us.

I know in my heart that my mother is traveling in the duat on her way the great halls somewhere beyond the liminal spaces I see in my dreams. I want her to have a proper ancestor shrine to return to when her journey is complete 66 days from now—but I do not want it to be empty save for her.

 There are other names to write on that list.

My experience with the spirit of E.M. just prior to her passing and my experience with Nebt-het the night of…my view of things has changed. My priorities have changed. For now, my mother’s name will be spoken often by those who knew her in life. But I know that, eventually, she will no longer be the most recent, most oft remembered name in our line. Eventually, she too will be a distant ancestor who exists mostly in faded pictures and aging legal documents. Someday I will suffer the same fate. For any of us to be remembered, all of us must be remembered. Future generations must look upon former ones with reverence and respect and feel the power and weight of their family history. Archives make that connection possible: without archives to back the names of the living, the names of the dead are swiftly forgotten and the power of the ancestry quickly lost.

I find other papers and scan them with my phone so we don’t have to spend too long at the box. An hour later, I leave with what records we have, prepared to research the rest. I am matron of the house now, I tell myself, it is my duty.

I am honored.

Polyvalance

"I thought I was handling it well--then boils started showing up on my hands and arms. You have to take care of yourself. It will get to you."

I have the fortune and privilege of teaching at the high school I graduated from. My former high school counselor still works at the school, and so when I found out that my mother was dying and that I would need to leave town earlier than expected to spend the summer helping tend to her, I showed up in my old counselor's office. She had lost her mother earlier that year. "It just sucks," she said when I asked what it was like, what I should prepare for, "no matter how old you are, it just sucks." Then, right before I left, she chased me down in the parking lot to give me the above advice, the warning, that no matter how strong we are, the death of a parent is a gut wrenching, hard hitting thing to deal with.

I haven't had any boils, but the night before last night I woke up at 5am as my body shook and what felt like boiling blood raced down the sides of my neck and my abdomen. It was almost like I was a space rocket struggling to take off. My mind was suddenly distant from my physical self and I felt like my soul might flee my body. I felt like I was dying--in fact, I remember thinking that. I remember thinking "So this is what it feels like to die...". It ended almost as quickly as it began.  Then my chest tightened and my stomach heaved. A moment later, my arms went numb and tingly.

I seriously considered the possibility that I had just had a heart attack (I'm very overweight, and I have heart disease in my family, so that's the first thing that came to mind) and I nearly stumbled into my parent's bedroom to ask someone to call 911. But the feeling of impending doom started to fade and I didn't feel like I was in immediate danger of dying so I decided to look up my symptoms online. To my surprise, the Web MD symptom checker didn't kick back heart attack but something I had never considered myself at risk for: Panic Attack.

I was always under the impression that panic attacks involved some sort of panicky feeling and irrational fears--something completely psychological. That's not really true, apparently. Panic attacks are physical events. It's the brain flipping on the body's fight or flight response system at a time when that kind of drastic physical survival mode is not really needed or desired. About 5% of people have at least one during their lifetimes. They aren't usually dangerous, but they are terrifying.

So...mystery solved right? My suppressed fear of my mother's imminent death, and my anxiety over exactly  when it will occur and how I will react, got released in the middle of the night as my brain struggled to cope with a volatile combination of ridiculous levels of stress and sleep deprivation. Just like my counselor experienced boils showing up on her arms. A physical manifestation of a difficult emotional situation.

But...

There was a dream. I was trying to get onto the right bus (not quite the boat from mythology, but the analogy is the same in either case) to travel to the duat. But I couldn't find the right one. I remember that clearly. I remember the shaking started right after one of the attendants told me it was time to leave anyway and we started moving. That's why I woke up thinking I was dying, and why I wasn't entirely surprised until I realized I was awake and that dying in real life hadn't been part of the plan...

There was a reading I did the day before with the "kemetic-oracle-cards-in-progress" deck that I made earlier this month. It had the duat card and akhu card in prominent places. It said I had issues to work through with both of them.

There was the dream later that evening when I tried to nap after I calmed down a bit. A dream where I was in the duat among the dead and speaking with an ancestor who came to me in the form of an old man/tiger who was a father in his life and who said he was desperate for offerings so he could go forth by day with his family, because he was separated from his wife and children somehow--an ancestor who just might be my great-grandfather (the black sheep of our family)...

There was a dream my mother tried to tell me about from the same night--but she couldn't make her brain work long enough to get the story out fully-- it involved being unable to "connect" and not having some kind of "engine" working--which faintly resembles my bus dilemma from my dream just before I started to "die"...

I was raised atheist. Science is king in our household. Science says I had a panic attack, but my spiritual instinct tells me there was more to it than that. What do I believe?

My mind was wrapped around that question as I went to bed. I was worried, because everything I've read says people can develop a panic disorder if they start to fear having an attack, and in turn, cause more of them with that fear--even if the initial trigger was something else. Science told me I should be worried about that. And I was worried, because I was scared. But my spirit told me that my "day-trip" to the city of the dead was what caused all of it, that there was no reason to be afraid, that I just had things to deal with in the unseen. That I could go back to the normal dreamscape I was used to now that the message had been received.

And I thought again...what do I believe in? Which do I put my faith in? Science or Spirit?

I keep forgetting that I don't have to choose. Just as there are double (triple, quadruple, many) truths inside my faith, so are there many truths in the world. Polyvalance. The mechanics of something do not have to define it solely and completely. Just because what I experienced would be labeled by science as a panic attack does not mean that the mechanism of a "panic attack" was not also being used for a specific spiritual purpose. Could this be my psychological/physical reaction to my mother's condition, the endless waiting for death, and my stress boiling over literally in the fell hours of  the night? Of course. And it is that. But it is also more than that. It is also an encounter with the unseen, breaking through in a moment when I was receptive to it. It is all bound up together. There are strands weaving in from both realities. Because one thing can be many things--and in any case, the result is ultimately the same. And the solution to my problem, to the fear choking me and keeping me from sleep, was the same no matter which truth I sided with in that moment...

I pulled my prayer book off the bedside table and I read from it. I read until I felt a sense of peace, of comfort, of acceptance of what would be. Then I turned out the light and went to sleep.

It was a normal night.

Ancestors

They were proud.

I am still glowing from the warm feeling of that.

I made a necklace for them--a one of a kind design, never to be repeated--and offered it during the dua today. I read the list of names, saying after each that I respectfully offered to them if they wished it. I was surprised how many of them did. Perhaps, when refusing before, it was not so much the act of veneration they were averse to (and rejecting) as it was the way in which it was presented. Perhaps last time I was too presumptive and it came off as rude? It could also have been the pendant which swayed them. I sensed a special attention being paid to that object more-so than the food offering or the flowers or even the water. They were proud. Proud of my skill, of my eye for beauty. Proud of my creation--that it had come from our line. 

My ancient, other life ancestors were happy merely to see me, and though I do not doubt that they were about even today, this offering got attention from my modern, present life ancestors. From people whose names and stories I know. They loved the pendant and, I think, through it were able to recognize me. Then they were happy to hear me read their names. They stayed for a bit and enjoyed the offerings. They heard my plea on my mother's behalf and I think they may have answered it: they are intervening on our behalf.

I am grateful beyond words.

And so I decide I will make them more art. And so it begins.

Voices from the Distant Past

This is complicated and uncomfortable to talk about. (Such is life, nay?) But...I think I have walked a life before this one. There are no details. No names. Just a feeling. At times I could swear I have bowed before these gods once in the past. At times I can almost recall the burn of sun or the spray of a river. Sometimes, when I'm bent over my workbench, I can almost remember lessons learned before in a similar art.I have always just brushed off these things. I thought that any former life--in Egypt or elsewhere--did not matter to the current one.

Then I met them.

My relatives are Jewish and Christian. My modern ancestors likewise. I tried to have an Akhu shrine once, but they did not respond well to it. I will admit, I was a bit hurt. But I respected their decision and let it go.

However. I am also an imperfect human being. After that rejection, I gave no offerings. I gave no prayers. I even said some ill things of a few of my beloved dead. I wanted to at least apologize--and show that I did not hold the incident against all of my ancestors and had forgiven the ones who had not wanted to be represented in my shrine. The Beautiful Festival of the Valley was approaching as I pondered this, and it seemed good timing.

I set the space, gathered the offerings, and purified myself. Then I approached the temporary altar (a small desk with limited space) and sat before the candles and bread and wine (sparkling grape juice, actually--I can't have alcohol). And I read the prayers in the book and as per the instructions, I broke bread with the deceased. I did not expect any answer, as I sat munching a bite of the loaf-- but to my surprise, there was a hand to take the other half of the bread.

The room seemed to get suddenly darker and in my minds eye, I found myself at a long table lined with faces I knew but didn't know and the air seemed to fill with the inaudible voices of a time long past. There was an hand on my shoulder, an uncle, I'm sure of it, and aunts sitting near me.These were people I knew intimately, but they were not relatives from my current life. There was a sense about them and how they laughed and looked at me, that I had come late to a party--that I was long overdue and they had been waiting.

It felt like home.

They came, not to scold me or to accept an apology. They came to tell me,

"We are here, waiting for you. You are not alone in the world of the dead. You have family here. You will join us again at our table when you come back."

They were joyous and they felt as though they had missed me. As though I had stepped out of that very place once before. I closed my eyes and I could feel night air in an open and dry place. I could smell candles made in another era.

Then as quickly as it had come, the vision was gone.

Ancestors.

I was once unhappy because I thought my recently departed kin did not want me and because, in my mind, that meant I had no ancestors at all. Now I feel a profound need to reconnect with voices long gone, and the warm glow of love from the unseen world touches me, like the candle buring on the altar, giving light to my eyes and heat to my face.

I remember. Can I ignore that? No. Even if I have always been wary of reincarnation claims. Even if I have always doubted my own feelings about it. Even if others raise an eyebrow when I say it. Even if it is uncomfortable to talk about. I have met them now, and so now I can not ignore it. Now I can not forget.

 I ate the rest of the bread and held onto the feeling of that place, the sound of those voices, and the touch of those hands-- for as long as I could until the seen world emerged from the dark and I returned fully to the world of the living; I whispered,

 "For your Ka. Drink of the intoxicating drink. It is a beautiful day."

 And I meant it