No Roads Can Be Open
Witch Tip: Sometimes your spell failures have nothing to do with you. Something you cast the spell perfectly and did nothing wrong. Sometimes there is something - beyond you - standing in your way.
It can be hard to tell the difference - especially if you are new and haven't practiced a ton of Discernment.
So, I will give you a very obvious example. How it happened. How it appeared.
In February of 2020 (oh...do you already see where this is going?!?), I cast the same spell for the upcoming Mercury retrograde cycle that I had cast for the 3 or maybe 4 Mercury retrogrades prior. I'd been working with Mercury, specifically, for about a year as the Master of Roads. It's not that the roads close when Mercury is retrograde, it's that he walks backward - he follows the widdershins path - or, said another way, he follows the low road - said another another way, he walks through the underworld.
But sometimes you've got stuff that still needs to get done. Mercury had instructed me that, in this case, I could create an altar in his honor and burn a candle through his retrograde cycle to keep specific roads open. As I said, I performed this ritual 3 or 4 times prior to February of 2020 with little to no resistance. It is one of the most effective spells that I've performed to date and I still do this ritual when I need to.
So we come around to February 2020. I perform this ritual exactly as Mercury and I have agreed upon in the same exact manner as I had before. And the candle won't burn. It floods itself and goes out and I need to dig out the wick. Over and over again. But this is a spell in which I expect there to be blockages, so I keep trying. But nothing works. The candle completely stalls out to the point that I cannot light it again.
At the time, I was so frustrated and confused. I tried divining on what was wrong and got the most peculiar message I've ever received in my entire life: no roads can be open.
There was a name on the wind, a word whispered, and yet, none of us believed it. It couldn't possibly happen to us.
It took me a full month to connect with what Mercury had told me. I remember the day - it was three days into total lockdown and my partner had been temporarily laid off as a non-essential worker. He was listless and worried about how we would pay our bills and I was going stir crazy imagining having to exist in a house with him 24/7 (I like a lot of personal space). I went into my bathroom and cut off all of my hair - something like 10" or more. I need to do something.
As I gathered my lost locks to throw away, a tiny voice echoed in my head. No roads can be open. That is the day that I knew that it would not be two weeks. My god of roads made it clear that my life would be changed for at least a year - perhaps longer.
Sometimes a spell fails because of something is beyond yourself. And sometimes you should thank the gods for the cryptic message that won't make sense to you for more than a month.
