Definitely in the midst (aftermath?) of a big Paradigm Shift, which I've had at least two or three of since starting my practice. Last year the god felt like storms in October and blue-slate clouds rolling over the hedge, too raw and awesome to feel like a person; before that, a prehistoric ancestor who spoke cipher-like and stilted through my tarot, almost too far removed to be legible. At the moment he's close to the surface, like another part of myself. I find myself looking for him in childhood memories of games I'd play with imaginary friends, slipping between speaking as them and myself and feeling my whole body change for it.
I know the land (and the p/People) where I work well enough to walk there at night, which is also something I imagined doing as a little kid growing up in the woods under my own witchy steam. I've done it pretty often for three years and it's deeply magical every time, kind of an Otherworld pilgrimage. It's intense enough, too, that sometimes I'm simply too unwell for it – the dark woods make my brain itch and if I don't listen to my gut and turn back I start tripping over my own feet at shadows. But it's also been a not-insignificant healing practice, learning when to push myself to blend into the trees and, sometimes, reminding myself that I am the most powerful, frightening animal in the woods. That I can let my guard down and play in the expansiveness of the dark; certainly, that I have allies who won't be fucked with.
Last night I went deliberately to the deepest part of the wood, which after a spliff and my deep meditative slow trance-walking slides into the Otherworld. I turned off the bridge with the full moon dark behind a heavy cloud and stepped into actual blackness, spiderweb strands hitting my closed eyelids. I can step reliably enough that no branches hit my extended forearm protecting my face, but I took my time anyway treading lightly. The sensation of attention snapping my way on this side of the bridge always feels like a huge intake of breath from somewhere very deep.
Sometimes the sensation unnerves me but last night I felt deep calm, nodding hello to the great silhouetted hullk of the Grandmother Tree and noticing a spell from my to-do list sliding to the front of my mind. This kind of intuitive working feels characteristic of whatever's going on for me Paradigm Shift Wise – like I've got some navigation and safety tools, built up over years and lots of trial and error, and now I can really roll my sleeves up and work.
At the Hollow Tree, the very centre of the deepest part of the wood, I laid offerings, made a clear request, accepted what was offered immediately and clearly in return. I sat back on her fallen companion log listening to the season-change humming up from the earth and warp-amplifying the sound of every fallen twig, paw-step, and distant bicycle. Glowing silver strips pulsed and crept across the muddy path strangely enough that it took me a while to notice the moon had lifted from the cloud. The noise and sensation became briefly deafening. I rarely sit still when they arrive but the god reached through to steady me: it’s okay. Listen, watch, react sensibly to what you observe. You’re not the first person on this land I’ve taught this; the Tree knows the stories of the ones who came before. Some of them you already know. Pay attention.
I heard the fox – or was it? Hard to say what the messenger becomes on an Otherworld full moon – before I saw him. He circled just out of the moonlight so details blurred in the Tree's shadow; I could only get the vague melting shape and trotting rustle-sound of him. His face, muzzle, even his white tail-tip evaded me even as I could feel the little precise jolt of his whole regard shift onto me and away. It'd been a little while but I wasn't surprised to see him. This is how I know I'm co-working, that my offerings have been accepted and a healthy mutual curiosity acknowledged. Without seeing, I could feel him studying me and trotting the inner bounds of the clearing. I kept my movement slow and my voice steady. As soon as he went away, a man with a white dog appeared out of the dark and the dog went into a little frenzy circling the Tree, nose furious to the ground. The man called to the dog in French, increasingly frustrated until I spoke up to explain, something I wouldn't usually do but I felt calm enough to say: il y avait un renard ici. He laughed and managed to catch the dog by the collar, and it lunged and barked at me as they went.
Until recently I've been puzzled and hurt by dogs lifting their hackles at me so often in the woods, startling their owners – it startles me too, when I love dogs and they're usually all over me on the street. Recently the god suggested it's because when I'm in it I act like a wild animal, sliding from town- to woods-body language in a way that's confusing to animals who pay close attention to human-scripts. I know he's close under my skin when I start noticing that in myself; when I pause in the middle of a grove to sniff and listen, twist my head around sharply and ease back when a twig cracks, slide myself behind a tree so a passing jogger doesn’t startle catching me in his headlamp. I feel less inclined to make a friendly reassuring noise or awkward greeting to someone I meet out in the dark – so what if they think I'm weird, they're out here like me and everyone acts weird at night. Instead, I catch myself learning to make eye contact with crows so they'll watch for my tossed fruit, knowing how to get a fox to come closer by turning my head ninety degrees away.
I finally put the offered tool in my bag and took my time coming back over the hill, closing out the working with a Neighbourly goodbye and quick cleanse at the Boundary Trees before I headed towards the road. The owls who’d greeted me on the way into the woods called distant on my way out. The god, who’d taken a back seat beneath my skin in the deepest part of the woods, slid forward naturally to chat and approve: this is how you do it. There you go. I told you I’d show you when you were ready.
